Zhang Lan Middle School – My childhood neighbor
Liu Huiying
Since I was born, my family has been living in the same courtyard as Zhanglan Middle School, drinking water from the same well, and entering and exiting the same school gate. The place where I did my childhood every day was the school. I know every corner of this place, every yard, and even every grass and tree.
Over the years since I left my hometown, many of the past events have been forgotten, but everything on campus has become clearer and clearer in my memory, and it often comes to mind from time to time.
Zhanglan Middle School, which is famous for its long history, has cultivated generations of national pillars. Little did the school be in 1955 in an overgrown patch. It was built on the ruins of ruined walls and collapsed houses. Eight houses were purchased and converted into student dormitories, some were used for teachers' offices, and some were converted into faculty and staff canteens. No matter which little yard it is, it was a great place for me to play hide-and-seek, play games, and hang out when I was bored.
Courtyard
The main building is the tallest building on campus and is located directly south of the school's circular playground. The appearance is extremely tall and magnificent, we call it Wang Shijie Courtyard or Lou Yuan. The courtyard of the building is in the form of a quadrangle, and there are five main houses facing south in the courtyard, and the bright houses and dark kilns are arranged in a row. There is a front eaves corridor to shelter from rain and sun on the high steps, the green tiles on the roof of the roll-up shed type are alternately lined up one after another, and the eaves and corners on all sides are built with the head decoration of the beast, the god head grimaces, the face is hideous. The walls of the house have long been blackened by the years, but you can still vaguely see the traces of the exquisite wallpaper pasted and the hand-painted flowers and birds around the wall. And in front of each door, there is a large bluestone with the same width as the threshold, to show that future generations should be down-to-earth. The second floor is a sub-compartment office area, plus a wooden parapet aisle, and the easternmost room is the school's radio room, which is also the school's command center.
Whenever the athletes' march sounded on the radio, the students would consciously walk out of the classroom, stand in the corresponding position of their own class in the playground, and wait in line in an orderly manner to do broadcast gymnastics.
A loud and high-pitched voice came from the loudspeaker on the roof of the building: Chairman Mao, the great leader, taught us: develop sports, enhance the people's physique, increase vigilance, and defend the motherland. Now start doing radio gymnastics~ Students will start broadcasting gymnastics seriously to the rhythm of the music.
The east and west sides of the building are also bright and dark buildings, the roof is a simple single-slope falling water type called a water room, the buildings of the east and west rooms on both sides are obviously much lower than the main building in the north, which not only shows the ethical dignity and order, but also shows the sense of hierarchy endowed by the building.
The west building is a warehouse for sports equipment and teaching equipment, and the second floor of the east building is the library with the largest collection of books in the school. The words 'Dream Building' are written on the door of the library, and because of the shallow knowledge, I dare not speculate why the library is named 'Dream Building', and I still don't know what it means to this day.
Directly south of the courtyard is a spacious hall that runs from north to south, and it may be an important place for the house to meet and discuss matters and receive relatives and friends.
The building is a gathering place for the teachers' office, and the versatile teachers have a variety of musical instruments at their fingertips, and the building will also have the sound of various musical instruments playing in their spare time.
Lao-yi-tai
Passing through the south room of the building, there is a spacious compound, and there is only one row of east rooms in this courtyard, where Mr. Wu Weilian's family lived back then. Mr. Wu lives in a small room at the southernmost end, adjacent to a large house of fifty or sixty square meters, and in front of the door there are three umbrella-shaped, long-broad-leaved, purple paulownia trees towering. In the middle of the south wall of the courtyard is a smooth background wall. The frame is erected and constructed with green bricks, and the diamond-shaped pattern spelled out after the green bricks are polished and leveled in the middle, which is simple and generous, and the top of the background wall is decorated with green tiles, with high and low ups and downs. Under the wall is a half-height simple open-air stage built with blue bricks, and the corresponding grandstand is in the northeast corner of the stage, which is also a modeling ...... made of diamond-shaped background wall.
Back then, the old ladies and young masters and young ladies of the mansion sat leisurely on the chairs of the princess, chatting and laughing, admiring the generals and talents on the stage, so uncomfortable, so comfortable and enjoyable. Now the stage is still there, the stands are still there, but they have long been different. Suddenly remembered a lyric: The shadow of the sword and sword was dimmed, and the drums and horns were far away. It's a bit abrupt to use here, but although the scenes are different, the feelings are similar.
Echo Lane
At the southernmost point of the school playground, there is a magical alleyway on the nine steps that lead to the courtyard and the pimple cave. The high walls on both sides sandwich the 20 to 30 meters long alleyway in the middle, and when you speak loudly, it is like a mirror that magically reflects the sound back. I often take two bricks in my hand and tap them as I walk. The sound will jump and reverberate in space. Shout a few times, and you can hear the same voice coming back, as if you are talking to yourself. It always felt like there was an invisible person learning me to speak. So I found a branch and stabbed it through the hole in the wall, looking for the person who learned from me. But I couldn't find it, so I sat quietly on the steps and meditated, fantasizing that the man who had learned how to speak would come out and stand in front of me.
When I grew up, I realized that when sound waves encounter obstacles, some of the sound will be reflected back, forming an echo effect.
Life is also like a sound wall: what you shout, it responds. Those who love love to return, and those who are blessed are blessed.
Kōtōin
Walking out of the echo alley to the south, there is a deep courtyard in the west, which has a difference of more than three meters between it and the main building, and people call it the pimple cave courtyard. Walking down the seven steps, you will see a row of south-facing five-hole caves on the north side of the courtyard, and the connection with the east room is the ladder that can go up to the top of the kiln, the top of the kiln is wide and flat, it is my childhood play paradise, standing here The whole view of the school playground is in full view.
It is said that this cave was the place where long-term workers and servants lived at that time. If this is the case, it is not surprising why there is such a big difference between the height of the main building and the pit courtyard building, which vividly distinguishes and embodies the equal class of the master and the subordinate.
Acacia tree
On the east and west sides of the building, there are two exits leading to other courtyards, and to the west is the Pimple Cave Temple, and to the east is Dr. Tian Xin's infirmary. The infirmary is two bungalows that are lower than the main building, and this location extends in all directions, so that you can see the details of the people coming and going to the house from east to west, and the details of the people entering and exiting the gate from the north and south. From the perspective of the position, this should be the gatehouse of the house, the vigil or the janitor.
In the courtyard of the infirmary, there are two large trees that are rare in the Zhanglan area, thick and straight. According to legend, it was planted when the Japanese occupied Zhanglan, and its authenticity has long been impossible to verify.
The bark of the large tree is smooth and grayish, and the feathery leaves are dark green and the patches are opposite. The magic is that whenever the sun rises, the leaves of the trees slowly open to welcome the arrival of a new day; When night falls, it closes on its own, as serene and serene as a sleeping baby. Every June and July, the pink flowers will bloom one after another, and the velvet and tufts are like a soft dance of a velvet fan in the wind, fragrant and fragrant. I would also go under the trees or smell the flowers, or admire the way they sway in the breeze, or pick up the flowers that fall in the wind.
Ms. Guo Yuet'e is my neighbor, very knowledgeable and knowledgeable, often telling us stories and riddles, from her I know that the name of this tree is the night flower, also known as the acacia tree. I memorized its name and often dreamed of night flowers in my dreams.
Director Yang's Hospital
Behind the health room is an independent courtyard with the gate sitting on the west. At that time, Mr. Yang Kaiqing, the director of middle school teaching, worked in this courtyard, and we called him Director Yang's courtyard.
Stepping on the three bright bluestone steps into the courtyard, it is a small house between the coats in the south, simple and atmospheric common sense says that there is an independent courtyard with bluestone steps and brick carved gatehouse, at least there should be a wing room or ear room configuration, but the area of this small courtyard is only thirty or forty square meters, compared with the majestic and towering house is indeed simple, shabby much. But its elegance and quietness have a feeling of being out of the way, it is far away from the hustle and bustle of the compound, and it is isolated from the right and wrong of the big house. Maybe it's a place for large families to chant and meditate, maybe it's a place for self-reflection, or maybe it's a boudoir where a young lady dresses up.
Stone grinding discs
The steps leading down the steps from the infirmary are a flat north-south avenue, and at the end of the road is the street gate that connects the house to the outside world.
To the east of the road there is a wide, long brick slope that leads to the low courtyard below. There is only one row of main houses in the courtyard, which is an arch kiln cave, which is very dilapidated and looks like no one has lived and taken care of it for a long time.
In the middle of the yard, there is a black blue stone grinding disc with a height of more than one meter and a diameter of two meters, and there is a fat stone mill squatting on the grinding plate, which is carved with deep grinding teeth. This is probably a stone mill where the house deep-processed all kinds of grain into flour. There are three houses on the front that can also store and store various kinds of food. The top of the house is flat and tidy, which can be used to dry grain or as a threshing field. In other words, the hard-working people here process the grain into fine rice noodles, and then make a variety of exquisite noodles, which are continuously delivered to the owner's table.
Most of the ways connecting the small courtyards of the mansion are up and down the steps, but here is a slope design, puzzled, and later saw the stone grinding disc to understand that the original slope road was to facilitate the carriage to transport grain or other materials specially built exclusive passage.
With the development and changes of the times, the stone grinding disc left by the ancestors has long been replaced by modern machines, and it has faded out of the people's lives, leaving only this stone mill lying quietly in the sun, intertwined with stone tooth marks, as if telling a story of the past.
Communication room
At the easternmost end of the campus is the school gate. Under the round-arched doorway, there are two painted doors with yellow inside and red outside. The door leaf is made of wooden strips about 30 centimeters wide that are spliced together in diagonal lines. On the south side of the doorway, there is a white sign on the house with the words "Communication Room" written in red, and the north wall of the communication room has a glass window facing the passage of the school gate, and the window on the west wall faces the entire campus, and everything in the campus can be seen at a glance in the communication room.
The doorman Lao Wang, who is in his fifties, has a pair of deep eyes under his thick eyebrows, a black mustache with both sides upturned, often wearing a black dress, fat trouser legs, and trouser legs are always wrapped with legs, which looks a little majestic, a little intimidating. It's like a dart master walking the rivers and lakes in the movie.
The communication room is small but clean and tidy, with a schedule pasted on the wall, and a pendulum clock hanging on the south wall to tell the time, and you can clearly see the clock on the wall when you walk through the aisle of the school gate. When it was almost time to start class, Lao Wang would walk out of the communication room in advance and walk unhurriedly to the back of the well platform to ring the clock. I would also follow Lao Wang to watch the bell be drilled, and the iron clock was installed on the commanding height of the roof of the building.
The rope of the bell was tied to a cypress tree behind the platform, and the sturdy and slender rope went over the roof of the teaching office to the bell. Lao Wang untied the rope tied to the cypress tree, pulled the rope up and down with both hands, and pulled the rope evenly and rhythmically, and the bell would be sounded! Clang! The sound of bells and melodious bells spread throughout the campus and resounded in every corner of the town.
The communication room is not affiliated with us, but it respects each other and gets along very well with our family. In those days, the production team often held meetings or night battles at night, and the sisters came home late, and the school gate could not be locked on time, which not only affected the safety of the school, but also affected Lao Wang's rest on time, so Lao Wang tried to use the button design on the door to make a small mechanism that only our family knows: fix the button on the rope, one end is outside the door and the other end is tied to the door bolt inside, as long as you see the door hanging on our homemade on the top of the letter' The small wooden sign with the word "meeting" will be put on the outside of the door, and the small button on the mechanism will be placed on the outside of the door, and the door will automatically open as long as it is pulled outside.
There are letters and newspapers sent and received in the communication room every day, and Lao Wang will place the received letters on the window glass and wait for the owner of the letter to come and claim it. The names of the newspaper subscription offices will be written on the masthead of the newspaper they receive and delivered them one by one.
Every holiday, my father would go to the concierge to chat with Lao Wang, talk about the past and the present, and read various newspapers and periodicals. At that time, there were not many types of newspapers, only People's Daily, Guangming Daily, Wen Wei Po, and reference news. Major news such as United States President Richard Nixon, Japan Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, and France President Pompidou's visit to China in 1973, as well as China's joint communique and the issuance of a joint communiqué by China Communications Construction Co., Ltd., were all learned from this small communication room.
Although the communication room is small and has little function, it is a big window for everyone to understand major international and domestic events.
Tsuchi-jing
The steps on the town that are comparable to entering the temple are none other than those in the school courtyard. The staircase is located in the southeast corner of the school, and it is more than 15 or 6 meters long, and the staircase is wide enough for an adult to lie flat on it, and the high thirteen steps go up to the courtyard.
Up the stairs is a courtyard with only one row of western houses, and a small house in the northernmost part is the office of the school's accountant, Mr. Wang Bin. At the end of each month, I would go there to pay the electricity bill of 0.6 yuan. After Mr. Wang charges the fee, he will also issue me a receipt voucher to prove it
There is another episode when I wrote about Mr. Wang. One winter, when my father came home from school on Saturday, he saw a worn-out coarse cloth bag on the way, which he picked up and was bumpy about. When I opened it, I saw that it was more than a dozen catties of sea salt particles, the weather was very cold, and there were few pedestrians on the road, and my father judged that it should be lost by the students who were going home to hurry. So when he returned home, he was sent to the school radio room to find the owner. Sure enough, a handsome and shy student came to the door a few days ago to thank him, and he learned that it was Mr. Wang's son during the conversation. Due to the rough road, there were no good things tied, and the bumps along the way lost the salty salt. Thank you very much. Calculate the time This little brother Wang who lost things should be nearly seventy years old by now, I don't know if you still remember the past when you were a student? !
Next door to the accounting room is a large school warehouse. In the southeast corner of the courtyard is a glass newspaper window bar nailed to the wall with a wooden frame, and next to it is a lost and found box with a small lock. At the easternmost end is the sweet water well that has nourished hundreds of households in the town for hundreds of years.
Stepping on the three steps, a well platform with an area of more than 20 square meters is presented in front of you. The well platform is surrounded by a cross hollow guardrail made of green bricks, which we call a flower fence. The round wellhead is made of a large maroon slate with deep grooves carved on the edge of the slab to prevent sewage from outside the well from backing up into the well. The tiles on the well platform are crisscrossed with green moss.
Standing on the well platform to watch the empty central tower is a good place, the towering waist roof on the city tower is round and soft, and the golden light shines in the sunlight, and the magnificent glazed tile roof is colorful and colorful.
On the well platform, two thick and long large bluestones with holes in the middle stand upright behind the well and are buried deep in the ground, and the part that is exposed to the ground supports the shaft core in the middle of the round hole one after the other. Then by a few pieces of hard wood put together into a barrel shape, by two iron rings before and after the hoop to make a reel with a hole in the middle, set on the shaft core, and then the crank crank crank is fixed on the reel, wrapped on the well rope, forming a lifting device for extracting well water ~ reel well. The reels have been worn and pulled by the well rope for many years, and the sides are thick and thin in the middle, just like the shape of a long drum in Korean dance, and the crank has formed a thick slurry smooth and smooth. Every once in a while, a small cloth bag with bleaching powder is hung in the well to purify the water. When drawing water, tie the bucket to the well rope first, fall freely along the well rope, wait for the bucket to touch the water surface, gently shake the well rope to shake the bucket, and then throw it away, and the water will fill the bucket. Then he shook the reel vigorously with one hand, and the other hand assisted the well rope to fill the bucket with water to expose the wellhead. Take it to the well platform and hook the bucket with a flat pole to pick it up and go home.
In winter, the well platform is covered with thick ice, and when the sisters go up to carry water, they first take the axes prepared in advance, step by step, and chisel away the smooth and thick ice layer one by one before they dare to climb the well platform. The happiest thing for the sisters is to meet a kind person who will help fill the bucket and carry it down the stairs.
I often play on the well platform, climb on the well head to peek into the well water, stomp on the ice of the well platform, and peel the ice skate on the well rope...... Of course, Mom knew it was going to be a fat beating.
This sweet well that has nurtured generations squeaks and sings the years of water and wood, like a trickle of water and wood nourishing my heart, although the memory is bit by bit, but it will not be easily forgotten.
Rei-in
Lili is the same age as me and is my only friend in the school yard. The family lives in a small courtyard in the northeast of the school. The yard is surrounded by houses, as well as a date tree and a well. There are five main houses on the high steps on the west side of the courtyard, and the middle two rooms are Lili's home.
Next door to Lili's house lives Li Liqing, the only teacher from Zhang Lan Middle School who has attended Yan'an's 'Chinese Anti-Japanese Military and Political University' (referred to as 'Kang Da'). Mr. Li is thin and thin, the waist is slightly bent, but he is very energetic, the Sanqi hair is very neat and neat, the black leather shoes on his feet are shiny, every time he goes out to class, it is always like going to a grand event, the dark wool clothes are spotless, straight and stylish, very particular and endowed with a sense of ceremony, just like the demeanor of a scholar.
Lili's father is the principal of the school, Teacher Wu is gentle and elegant, slightly fat, always smiling and approachable, like an uncle next door amiable, without the slightest shelf of being a principal, we naturally will not have a sense of restraint.
Listen to my mother: One year, my sister was still young and followed her mother out of the house, took the train home in the middle of the night, it was pouring rain, and Mr. Wu, who heard the knock on the door, personally opened the school gate, picked up the fourth sister, braved the heavy rain and stepped on the muddy road, and sent my mother and sister home.
When I was a child, Lili and I played together every day, and sometimes there would be a little conflict, and Mr. Wu would take our little hands and put them together and help us reconcile with a smile: hold hands together and be good friends.
Teacher Wu is very diligent, and there is a vacant land in the middle of the yard, so he reclaims it. Sorghum stalks are also used to form a fence, and crops such as sunflowers are planted in the middle. When it's harvest time, each person will share a little sunflower seed with us.
Lili's mother is a primary school teacher, intellectual and tasteful, with thick and fluffy short ear-length hair, simple and atmospheric, a blue background and white dot jacket with a beige wool scarf on the shoulder, fashionable and elegant, vermilion cowhide bag embroidered with small flowers, delicate and chic. If it is preserved to this day, it will still be the most popular fashion masterpiece. At that time, I felt that Mr. Gao was the most beautiful mother in the world.
Lili has been smart, sensible and diligent since she was a child, and her parents are busy with work, so she will take the initiative to help the family do some housework within her ability. Keep your home clean and tidy.
She has a dynamic alarm clock for chickens pecking rice, which is also covered with a gentle dust-proof small gauze scarf, and the chicken head part of the old hen on the alarm clock will swing rhythmically with the second hand, simulating the action of pecking on the grass every second, which is warm and full of childlike fun.
What I love to see the most is the photos on the wall of Lili's house, the photo frame is inlaid with photos of the whole family from various periods, and the most attractive thing for me is a group photo of Lili's two younger sisters, in the photo, the young lady is wearing a polka dot skirt, and her big clear and bright eyes look up at the sky together, and Lili proudly introduces me to the stars: they are looking at the stars......
Lili's brother is a few years older than us, wearing a blue and white horizontal striped navy shirt that is rare for rural children, and he is sunny and handsome and lively. He would sometimes take us around the campus to play. Every time spring comes, I make a big kite out of discarded newspapers. When flying kites, it attracts a lot of children to chase and watch. Brother Lili also has a lot of comic book villain books, my eldest sister often borrows them to read, and when she returns the book, she will put a book cover on each villain's schoolbag so that she can continue to borrow it next time~ I remember that there are arrows by the river, Xiao Erhei getting married, Xiao Bing Zhang Ga, and the interesting adventures of the little cloth head and so on.
Big locust tree
The biggest feature of the old campus is that there are many steps, many old houses, many old yards, and a variety of tree species. There are date trees, peach trees, Canada poplars, willows, cypresses, paulownia trees, acacia trees. The most eye-catching thing is the large locust tree that grows on the west side of the school playground. It was planted by the eldest brother Jiang Tong, the boss of the Cai family on South Street, when he was a child, and the tree is more than 80 years old. The thick roots of the locust tree are bare on the ground, and the twists and turns of the roots extend around the playground. Every May, clusters of white locust flowers adorn the branches, and the air is filled with a refreshing fragrance, attracting countless bees to travel lightly between the flowers to collect honey, which is very spectacular. At this time, we will also use the long and sturdy sorghum stalks to make a T-shaped tool, raise our hands above our heads to align the flower strings and quickly turn them and pull them down violently, and the whole bunch of locust flowers will wrap around the sorghum stalks and break off from the branches and leaves. Take it in your hand and pluck the green flower stalk and eat it little by little, tasting the sweetness and aroma of the locust flower. I often climb onto the fork with a coarse porcelain bowl, smell the fragrance of flowers and eat the classic pasta made by my mother~ Red Noodles Auntie.
After about ten days, as the weather gets hotter, the simple locust flowers will turn into full of locust horns. A breeze blew, and the horns of Huaijiao swayed and rustled in the wind, bringing coolness. We will come to the locust tree or play in the shade, just as the so-called true sense of the predecessors planted the tree and the descendants enjoy the shade!
Time flies, and it has been almost forty years since I left my hometown in a blink of an eye. If you want to look at the campus in your memory, it has long been replaced by a new type of modern and standardized school. Only the leafy old locust tree has witnessed the vicissitudes of the campus.
I put together the fragments of my memories and revisited every corner and courtyard of the campus in the form of words.
A few years later, if I really lose my memory, I can still remember the original appearance of the campus from the lines and details of these words, and I can still find the campus shadow in my memory. It is enough to fill my deep nostalgia for ...... hometown.
It is also a gift for one's childhood.
About the Author
Liu Huiying, female, born in 1962, is the daughter of the late teacher Liu Guohua, who has been engaged in education in the mountainous area for 40 years. He worked as a substitute teacher at Zhanglan School and later worked in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, and is now retired.