Once upon a time in the Gan River
(Author: Zhou Guangjun)
The Gan River was originally called the Wadi River.
Ganhe is a rice-producing township, it has thousands of acres of fertile land, and there is no need to worry about water and drought. There is a song to confirm: "If a girl marries to the Ganhe Dam, she is not afraid of dry weather and waterlogging!" This means that if there is a family in Ganshan who marries a family living in Ganhe, if the year is not good, they will also receive assistance in food.
I don't know when, people also called Ganhe River the land of fish and rice, a "fish" word, it means that the ecological environment has risen to a higher level.
There is a poem as proof:
The Ganhe River bends and the silver line is long, and the Qianmo is full of grain.
Under the moon, the boat spreads the net diligently, and the artemisia pole supports the fisherman.
According to the local elderly: In the past, there was no weir on the Gan River, although there were green mountains, there was no green water, and there were some shortcomings. Usually, only a stream of water the thickness of a wooden basin comes down from the head of the river, and disappears from time to time in the rocky riverbed. The riverbed is overgrown with weeds and there are few fish and shrimp. In the dry autumn and winter, it is desolate. During the flood season, there are times when lightning and thunder are roaring, strong winds are blowing, and flash floods break out of the riverbed and flood the crops. After the rain, the sky cleared, and the river disappeared without a trace.
It is really the reproduction of the scene of "easy to rise and easy to retreat" in "Zengguang Xianwen": "easy to rise and easy to retreat". That's why people call it the "wadi".
I believe what the old man said, because I am a native of Ganheba, and I have witnessed the process of the Ganhe River rising and disappearing many times.
In fact, what made Ganheba really become a rice granary was after the founding of the Ming Dynasty. With the process of social and historical development, the pace of national reunification knocked on this barren land, and under the influence of the military tun, the dry river dam was gradually developed. The industrious people cut reeds, cut trees, weeds, and seaflowers, and reclaimed hills and fields along the dry river. One can imagine the fragrance of the earth permeating the sky over the Gan River, and how excited the reclamation people were.
Compared with the past when scooping water in wooden basins, two buckets carry water, and a bucket is tied to a bucket with ropes, and the two people are much lighter and more advanced.
In order to pull water to irrigate the fields, people learned to adapt measures to local conditions, nailed wooden stakes in the riverbed, arranged them with branches, and built dams with mud to stop the water.
The Ganhe Dam where we live today used to have many small bridges for people to pass through, most of which were made of stone, but due to contemporary construction, most of them have disappeared into the dust of history. Such as the stone bridge of Zhulinzhai, the flat bridge between Zhoujiazhai and the peace bridge. In addition to the slate bridge, some places are "single-plank bridges", and some villages simply pass on the weir embankment. There are three large weirs and five small weirs on the Gan River. Three large weirs store water to irrigate fields, and five small weirs hold water to flush water and mill grain.
The eight weirs of all sizes are like eight golden belts tied to the Gan River. Each weir has a different shape of water, like irregular pieces of blue agate. Each weir is naturally distributed according to the advantages and natural distribution, which not only has the beauty of cheerfulness and smoothness, but also has the function of convenience and moderation.
One side of the water and soil to support the other side.
The land of Ganhe Tianba is fertile, with thousands of acres of fertile land, and the material is rich in grain. Several large villages are built on the mountain, separated from each other, forming a basin.
The village on the southeast corner, called the foot of the sacred tree, there are more than a dozen towering ancient trees in the village in the past, one of them is a tower dwelling dozens of white cranes, the village people think that there is a god, headache and brain fever and the like, they go to the tree to burn incense and make a wish, for a long time, the name of the village is called the foot of the sacred tree. At the beginning of liberation, it was changed to a large slope.
There is a gap between the foot of the slope and the green mountain, the water of the Ganhe River crosses from Yingyan Village, from the Fengxiang Dam and the bamboo forest village of Pingzhai Village through the green mountains and the water to hit the field, and flows from the gap to the river bay at the foot of the big slope. Our ancestors built weirs at the gaps, raised the water level, and built ditches to divert water to irrigate hundreds of acres of rice fields in Yanjiao and Pingzhai.
According to the "Qingzhen County Chronicle": "During the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, the local people nailed wooden stakes, blocked the soil to build an earthen weir, and diverted water to irrigate the fields. During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, it was changed to Shiyan. "I went to Chengdu to visit Dujiangyan, and when I came back to see Touyan, I always felt that Touyan had the same magic, it was a pocket-sized version of Dujiangyan, and it embodied the wisdom of the ancestors to the fullest.
In the south of the village at the foot of the big slope, there is a weir embankment to store the river bay into a deep and wide water, and with the water area, there are schools of fish and shrimp, and the scenery of fishing under the shade of willows. At the lower end of the embankment, there is a water mill house, and under the thatched roof of the wooden frame is a round stone stone that rolls in the stone trough, and the rolling grain rumbles. The sparrows on the roof trusses take advantage of the air to steal the grain from the grinding trough. The squire arrived and flew away.
The foot of the big slope is backed by the mountain, facing the dam, the water is green and the mountains are green, and the environment is beautiful. On both sides of the river, the green bamboo bushes, the willows are still around, and the birds are singing and the flowers are fragrant. The air is fresh in the bend. In the hot summer season, the people of the village like to sit and rest on the stone ridge in the lower half of the stone rock, the white thorn flower is draped on the mountain rock, and the fragrance of the white flower waterfall is fragrant, refreshing the spleen. You can also fish in the green water and clear waves, and the leisure days are really refreshing.
At six o'clock in the morning on the first day of the first lunar month in 1936, Li Qigong, a villager at the foot of the slope, took the incense wax paper candle to the river to pick up silver water, just inserted the incense candle under the frog stone on the weir embankment, and burned the paper money. Curious, he put down the bucket and trotted to the foot of the river bay rock, only to see a team of big fish swimming in the white waves of the river, and the formation was like a dragon swimming in a meandering swamp. At this time, there are many people who come to carry water, and an old man said: "The fish swims in the shape of a dragon, this is the Ruixiang!" "At that time, there was a shortage of soldiers, and people didn't think so.
The river goes straight down to the west at the foot of the big slope, and when you reach the foot of the white rock, you are blocked by a stone weir, and under the eaves is a wooden frame mill house, the stone trough of this mill house is smaller in diameter than the stone trough of the mill house at the foot of the big slope, so people call it a small mill house. It is specially designed for the people of Pingzhai who live and eat rice at the foot of the rock located in the southwest corner of the Ganhe Dam. It is said that the two mills were built by a stonemason surnamed Song, why not build the same size, and later learned that the repair of these things is particular, that is, the owner's wealth and social status of the mill determine the size of the specifications.
The foot of the rock is a hundred-year-old Buyi ancient village, there are more than a dozen families living under the rock, behind the house is the karst cave, every April 8, May Dragon Boat Festival, the flood will emerge in the karst cave, the white blind fish will rush out, the residents respect it as the divine fish, no fishing is allowed, the rain stops and the water is discharged, and the white fish returns into the cave with the water. One year, the ducks that the residents locked in the karst cave retreated into the cave with the water, listened to the duck cry and gradually drifted away, so they were bold, held the torch, and the branch ladder set up the board to enter the cave, after several twists and turns, went down to the depth of more than ten zhang, and found that there were many karst caves and dark rivers under the Ganhe Dam. And there are stone stoves and ashes in the dry place, and fragments of cooking utensils. I don't know when. There is a cave road that leads directly to the top of the Ganhe Dimu Temple.
Pingzhai and Yanjiao village hug each other, and Qingbi Highway passes in front of the village. Not far from the highway, there is a hill like an inverted spinning top, the top of the mountain is the Ganhe Dimu Temple, in the early days of liberation, a young intellectual surnamed Ding was teaching in the Ganhe Primary School, was shot dead by Cao Shaohua's bandits in the rice field at the mouth of the second Yan.
The second weir is not far to the north of the Ganhe Dimu Temple. The river reached the temple slope, and when it was blocked, it flowed northward. The construction of the second weir irrigates the rice field to the west of the dam. A ditch goes straight to the front of the cloak village in the northwest of Tianba, irrigates more than 100 acres of fields, and raises the people of that village. Eryan is built across the river, in the past, the villagers at the foot of the big slope want to take the Qingbi highway to catch the market, or take the car down to Guiyang, to pass through the weir, whenever the water rises, the weir embankment is paved into a waterfall of more than ten zhang wide by the flood, and pedestrians can not pass.
In 2018, in the construction of the new countryside, the construction personnel built a wooden shingle structure wind and rain bridge more than ten zhang away from the Eryankou to solve the problem of travel for the villagers.
From the second weir to the north of 200 zhang, a stone weir about 20 zhang long, the water is stopped to the Zhoujiazhai and Xiaoba field in the north of the dam. His name was Sanyan. Under the weir at the north end, there is a grinding house with stone walls and thatched, it is said that this grinding house is also repaired by Song stonemasons, but the diameter and size of the grinding house are the same as those at the foot of the big slope.
To the east of Ganhe Tianba, there is the Flame Mountain and the Tanjia Mountain, and there is a small pinnacle between the two mountains, which is called the Keixin Mountain. Between Jixin Mountain and the big slope is a gentle slope, forming more than 100 acres of slope soil, and the slope soil vegetation is abundant. At the junction of the foot of the slope and the Tianba, there are two natural villages, Pingqiao and Wildcat Cave. In front of Pingqiao Village is the river water village, people travel, Shangwei (Acropolis) catches the market, to cross the river, a single-plank bridge, eroded by wind and rain, three or five years to change the wood, very troublesome, and once fell a woman in the river. The people of the village discussed together, and everyone funded the construction of a three-hole stone bridge, the slab has no arch, people call it "flat bridge" as for the construction time, there is no way to verify.
Before liberation, an old man surnamed Liu at the foot of the big slope rushed to the market and drank with friends, and only rushed home after the end, when he came from Zhoujiazhai to the side of the yard, it was already the end of the month. When the slightly drunk old man walked to the side of the flat bridge, he saw a white hen running to the prickly pear cage under the bridge with six chicks under the moonlight, but he didn't care. When he walked to Pingqiao Village, he sat under the persimmon tree and shouted, which chicken is it, and it is still jumping on Pingqiao all night! One of the people who lit a torch went to look for chickens under the bridge, and under the foundation of the bridge that had been washed away by the flood, he found a piece of silver with ten taels and six ingots of broken silver with one tael each. He got this windfall, bought a piece of land, and became a landowner.
Later, people learned that when the funds were raised to repair the bridge, there were 16 taels of silver left, and everyone agreed to bury the silver under the bridge, and the bridge was damaged in the future and used as funds for repair. Over the years, the bridge has withstood the impact of countless floods, but it is still intact, and the gold and silver have been buried for a long time, and it will want to see the light of day again.
In 2014, the agricultural carnival "Flower Dance Acropolis" project was launched, and Pingqiao and Wildcat Cave were relocated as a whole. The beautiful mountain village of Xiaoqiao and Liushui was replaced by the lily base.
On the ninth day of the first lunar month of 1936, the 2nd · 6th Army Corps of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army passed through Qingzhen from Xiuwen. More than 17,000 people from the viewing, through Dashiguan, Wangjiazhai to the Acropolis, one of the troops from the village to come, through the peach chong, green mountains into the water to hit the field, in the head of the weir water to wash their faces, to the head of the weir big sha field in the pot to make rice.
The head of the Red Army and several Red Army soldiers went to Liu Qizhi's house at the foot of the slope to borrow grain, picked the mill at the foot of the slope to grind rice, and processed it with a mill, but the supply could not be supplied, so the millet picked up from the Acropolis was sent to the small mill at the foot of the rock and the rice mill at the Sanyan mill.
The Red Army held a meeting of 1,000 people in the Black Temple of the Acropolis, beat the local tyrants to share the floating wealth, picked up millet from the Acropolis and returned to the foot of the slope, and returned to Liu Qizhi's house. The Red Army propagated revolutionary doctrines at the foot of the slope and won the support of the masses. The crowd hiding in the middle of the mountain all returned to their homes. Some families sent sweet potatoes, peppers, and vegetables to the Red Army. The bacon that the Red Army bought in Pingzhai also brought two pieces to Liu Qizhi's house.
In Touyan Shatian, at the scene of the Red Army's pot, the masses brought their family's meals to fight with the Red Army, and performed a vivid drama of the military and civilian fish and water conditions.
In the early morning of the next day, the Red Army quietly left the foot of the big slope, they crossed the Tianba from the foot of the village, crossed the river from the mouth of the second weir, and went straight to the cloak village from the side of the drain ocean. After joining up with the main army, advance towards the Kamochi River.
The people got up early in the morning to open the door and saw that their courtyards were cleaned and the tanks were filled with water. Those who lent grain to the Red Army received more for themselves than they lent. On the first day of the first lunar month, an old man surnamed Liu, who saw Jackie Chan of the fish team, said: "I said, there is Ruixiang, the Red Army is passing by, and there is no crime in autumn." ”
After the liberation, the party and the government allocated funds to repair the weir embankments of the first weir, the second weir and the third weir. It also built a cement structure ditch road bridge from the large slope foot over the water trough. In 2014 and 2023, ecological governance of the Ganhe River will be implemented successively, and the water conservancy function will be highlighted. It has truly become a veritable "Gan River".
There are many things in the past of the Gan River, and those touching stories often haunt my heart.
——Published in the 51st issue of the Spring 2024 volume
author
Zhou Guangjun, pen name Gengyushanren, is a member of the Guizhou Prose Literature Association and the Guizhou Documentary Society.
Source: Qingzhen City Federation of Literary and Art Circles