Aged Nianxi: Poria | The Gorge River flows westward

Tuckahoe. Visual China|Figure

One

In this place, there has always been a tradition of Poria cocos. Planting Poria cocos is not very profitable, and the fire is burning on the hillside, and the main thing is that it is convenient to obtain materials. On the mountains along the river, wildfires burn inexhaustibly, wind and rain blow and grow, and the pine trees are so strong that they have to retreat.

The method used now is, of course, artificially planted, which is scientific and high-yielding. The pine trees were cut down on the mountain, cut off sections, scraped the bark, dried until they were semi-dry, and buried them in the ground in patches together with the seeds of Poria cocos, which were put into the soil in March and April, and harvested in July and August. And before that, Poria cocos was wild. The oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea of every household, the children's tuition fees, medical treatment and dressing, and the Lilly love affair almost all rely on the income of picking poria cocos.

Every year at the end of summer and autumn solstice, it is just time to dig Poria cocos. Adults and children, carrying baskets and hoes, went up the mountain to find Poria cocos. Poria grows with the roots of a pine tree, buried deep in the soil, and is not easy to find, so experience and luck are important. Generally speaking, young and vigorous trees do not grow poria, only the kind of old, sick pine trees grow, but normal pine trees, even if they live for a hundred years, do not appear old, you have to find the kind of pests and diseases, the trunk of the woodpecker pecked out a series of holes. Blind digging sometimes gets it, but it's always half the effort, or even in vain. Usually it depends on whether the soil on the ground is arched, Poria cocos is big, grows fast, will arch the ground up a bag, if the soil under the tree has a bag, and there is cracking, then there must be a litter of big guys. The power of Poria cocos lies in the fact that it has been harvested this year, and there will be next year, from generation to generation, similar to the human beings in this world, life and death, rise and fall, and there is no end to it.

The pine forest on the mountain is vast, but there are many people digging, this season is the most lively time, and even some people don't seem to be picking poria cocos, just to catch up with the excitement, show their existence, and pass the loneliness on their bodies. East Mountain and West Mountain, North Slope and South Slope, separated by a ditch and a river, far away, flirting, calling friends, beckoning to smoke together, eating dry food and drinking water, talking about heaven and earth, from morning to night. There are also men of the Zhang family and women of the Li family who do things that are not boring for ten years.

Filial piety song is a song on the filial piety hall, also called the song of death, can not be sung indiscriminately, unlucky, but in the wilderness, you can break the rules and not be so particular. When picking Poria cocos, the world is far away, and filial piety songs are sung casually. For singers who like to sing, songs are days, days are songs, songs are life, life is songs, bitterness is also sung, joy is sung, sorrow is sung, music is sung, nothing can separate people from songs. My favorite thing to listen to is "The Five Watches of Britain and Taiwan":

One more Yingtai resents Brother Liang,

On the way to worship at the beginning,

Go to Nanxue to attack the book.

Brother Liang treats slaves with kindness,

Slave Brother Liang is empty,

Viet Nam comes from the north to the west and the east.

This thing is ridiculous rhyme Hu Zhong,

The eighteenth prince fights Lintong,

People compete for idleness.

The first watch was okay, and he entered the country, and the person who sang could still control himself, but when he got to the second watch, he couldn't help but feel sad, and the whole person went in completely:

The second more Yingtai complained about his father,

The slave complains that his father and mother have no claim,

You shouldn't have enslaved Ma Lang.

Brother Liang treats slaves with wide affection,

Slave Brother Liang has no end,

Dou Yanshan came to have a righteous prescription,

Teach the five sons to be famous,

Meng Jiangnu came to deliver clothes,

Leave a good name and a good name.

Someone in front of you has started, and someone in the back will automatically pick it up, sometimes a man picks it up, sometimes a woman picks it up, a man and a woman, not the voice of Yingtai, and Yingtai are separated by a hundred years and thousands of years, thousands of miles, and they are all possessed by Yingtai:

Five more Yingtai complained about the blue sky,

The slave complains that the sky is blind,

Slaves and mandarin ducks should not be dismantled.

Brother Liang treats slaves far away,

There is guilt in enslaving Brother Liang,

Guangwu Xinglai for the Eastern Han Dynasty,

More than 400 years of faithfulness to the present,

It has to be carried out to extend the flood of Minzi Qian,

A good marriage was formed in front of the Master's door.

Far-reaching, desolate, high-pitched and soothing tones, extremely infectious and penetrating. They spread far and wide in the mountains and forests, echoing, dissipating, and seemed to be there forever. The singer and the listener are sometimes Yingtai, sometimes themselves, sometimes others, sometimes dead, sometimes alive.

My father had several books of filial piety songs, just like the words sung, and the red pen copied the red pen to draw them. Some are his creations, and some are copied from his predecessors or peers. He has always been quite critical of modern drama, saying that there will be no drama after the model play, which of course means that there is no innovation and creativity. What he doesn't understand is that art comes from life, from life.

At some point when he was leaving, my father packed these songbooks and hid them in a hole in the wall to say goodbye to this world in all directions. In 2018, the countryside was relocated, the old houses were demolished and returned to the fields, and these songbooks were dug up, but they were almost ruined by insects. The joys and sorrows of daily life, those lives and fates, those distant histories and legends, are no longer recognizable.

Two

It is easy to plant and difficult to sell, which is about the tiredness of the game of wits and courage with small traders and vendors in the sales process. Li makes people blindfolded, and if you don't pay attention to it, you will fall into the other party's pit.

The poria cocos that are dug up are first steamed in a large pot, peeled off, diced and dried, and dried before they can be sold. In the season of drying Poria cocos, the most afraid of rainy weather, the Poria cocos cut into dices is the most damp, a few days without seeing the sun, the white flowers will give birth to green mold, even if the sun behind it keeps up, the moldy green moss, it will never disappear, like a stain on the human body, forever, although it does not necessarily affect the efficacy, but it just can't be sold at a good price. Therefore, people invented the ondol and dried it with firewood, which also added extra hardship.

Most of the traders who buy Poria cocos are from Nanyang, Henan, one is that Nanyang is close, and the other is that Nanyang has a market, a thoroughfare of nine provinces, and it is a lively place. At the earliest, they didn't think about collecting poria, they went to the villages and villages to sell clothes, sell haberdashery, large bags and small bags, and walked for ten days and a half months. After selling the clothes, the haberdashery, the big bags and small bags became empty, and when I inquired, Poria cocos made money, so I bought some Poria cocos and picked it back. Sometimes, a pick of Poria cocos is more than a pick of clothes department stores, and slowly, selling clothes department stores has become a side business, and later, the processing link has been added, and it has become an industry.

It's not easy to be a hawker, if you want to make more money, you have to keep the price down as much as possible, and how to lower the price is not an easy task. They will hide a few grains of poria in their sleeves in advance, and when they look at the goods, they will secretly put them into the seller's goods, and the seller will swear that the goods are good and how to do them. The seller took it and took a look, and he really didn't do it, and immediately couldn't argue, so he couldn't argue, and he had to bargain. Of course, such tricks cannot be used often, so new tricks are constantly being created.

There are also those who manipulate money, such as using counterfeit money, of course, this is a one-shot deal, and there are risks. One year, there was a man who bought a cart of Poria cocos and used counterfeit money. There are also high and low counterfeit coins, and this counterfeit money is well done and cannot recognize the real one. But it was discovered afterwards, and the old couple who sold Poria cocos took the money and deposited it in the bank, and the money detector recognized it, and they collapsed in anger and fell seriously ill. The person who bought Poria never stepped into the Gorge River again, and the old couple never stepped out of the Gorge River again.

If the buyer makes it bad, the seller will also make it bad, and the devil grows together. There are many bad ways to make it bad, and each has its own secret recipe, and it is impossible to explain it inexplicably. Commonly used is to mix diced sweet potato in Poria cocos, diced sweet potato is also white, can not be seen, peel the sweet potato, cut into dices, put a piece to dry, that is, sweet potato has a sweet taste, dare not taste. There are also diced potatoes, the diced potatoes are dried and blackened, and the color is bright, so I dare not mix more.

Poria cocos smoked with sulfur is good-looking, snow-white, it will not be bad for a long time, and it can be sold at a good price.

Three

There are also people who are not satisfied with the low price of the traders, and want to sell them at a good price, so Zhang De sold Poria cocos to Changsha.

The Gorge River is more than 1,000 miles away from Changsha, separated by two provinces, for people with small mountains and small rivers, Changsha is a big world, prosperous like a dream. Zhang De has never been far away, he doesn't know anything about Changsha, let alone the market situation there, the reason why he sold Poria cocos to Changsha is that he heard that it is the south, the Xiangjiang River and the Yangtze River Dongting Lake, the climate is humid, the human body is generally affected by moisture, and needs to be dehumidified.

The three thousand catties of Poria cocos were pulled to Changsha, and Zhang Decai found that it was not what he imagined at all. He first found a hotel to stay in, stored the goods, and took some out to find buyers. He first went to a crowded place, Orange Island, Dongtang, Huangxing South Road, Wuyi Square, not only no one bought it, but people wearing big hats always drove him away. Zhang De thought, in a prosperous place, people are prosperous, they have everything, but they are not sick, and naturally they don't understand the use of medicine. He then pushed the cart to the residential area and sold it along the alley. After two or three days of selling, no one still paid attention to him, and there was a reason, saying that he was a liar. Zhang De returned to the hotel, there was no way in front of him, and he was completely deflated.

The innkeeper is a woman, in her thirties, not good-looking, there are many kinds of women who are not good-looking, she belongs to the kind that cannot be seen. The female boss is not only not good-looking, but also not easy to mess with. After staying for seven or eight days, Zhang De's spare money was almost spent, and he asked the boss if he could owe the room fee first, and the woman shouted, owing the sky and the earth and the sleeping money, which attracted the guests to come out to watch. A man, how could he have suffered such a great insult, Zhang De was angry from his heart, and said, I owe you the house fee, I can't let you owe it, I have a good house, and it is not worth your house money? Everyone is curious, and they have to see a room full of goods, and some of them recognize them and say that they are indeed good goods. Someone helped Zhang De speak, saying that the room fee for a year was worth it.

In the evening, the female boss knocked on the door of the open door and said, if you want to live, you can live, ten catties of Poria a day, one knot a day. How can a man not bow his head under a low tree? Zhang De said, OK.

A few days later, the woman found Zhang De again and said, I want all your medicinal materials. It turned out that the woman was divorcing her husband, and her husband turned out to be a poor boy, but later he mixed it up and worked in a medicinal material company, so he naturally recognized good goods. The hotel was opened by the husband with money, and he wanted to get a divorce, and the man wanted to take back the house, but the woman had no money and couldn't leave for a few years. The woman said to her husband, give you 3,000 catties of Poria cocos, and the hotel will belong to me. The man settled the account and said, "According to what you said, two clear."

The female boss said to Zhang De, 3,000 catties of Poria cocos belong to me, and my people will even give you a hotel, you can live as you want, and you can live as long as you want.

Zhang De looked at Poria at night, out of the night's god, thinking about this half of his life, thinking about his hometown, thinking about his father and mother who had passed away a long time ago, thinking of the end, he cried. The next day, he found the female boss and said, "It's up to you."

Zhang De never returned to Xiahe, became a hotel owner, had money to spend, had a woman to serve, and lived a good life, but every time he saw a woman, he always felt awkward. When someone came to his hometown, he was not allowed to see his wife and brought him to the restaurant for dinner.

Zhang De will make his hometown small every year and send him a few catties of Poria cocos. Novels are also sold in the Changsha market, more than 1,000 miles, separated by mountains and rivers, and the postage is not cost-effective. Zhang De said, expensive is more expensive, cost-effective or not, I know in my heart.

Four

There are many people who pick Poria cocos and plant Poria cocos, and they all know that it is a Chinese herbal medicine, but what major diseases can be cured, what miraculous effects there are, and it is not clear, people generally only use it to treat some fur diseases, and then make Poria cocos cakes, Poria cocos cakes, are delicious. Poria cocos is beaten into powder, passed through the basket, mixed with half of the white flour, some are filled, some are not added, and they are baked in the pot. But Poria cocos can be sold for money, and it is not something that dares to eat casually, and it is eaten once in a while during the New Year. I heard that people who urinate a lot at night eat Poria cakes and get up less at night.

Jiang Si, an old Taoist priest on Wufeng Mountain, can be regarded as a master of Poria cocos medicine.

The king blacksmith, who had been fighting iron all his life, had a disease, and no one knew what it was, and no one could cure it. I went to the big hospital for an examination, and the doctor said that the kidney was not good, and asked what could be done, and said that there was no way, unless I changed it to a new one, but where was the new one, I couldn't afford to replace it, so I went home to survive. Wang blacksmith gave Jiang Si a sickle in the temple, and the knife was good, cutting all the grass on the mountain. I have made a hoe for Guanli, the hoe is light, and I have dug up the wild poria in the pine forest. Jiang Si said, you come, live in my view, I'll try. The blacksmith Wang thought that he would be a dead horse as a live horse doctor, and it was better to try it than to wait for death, so he lived in the temple for more than half a year. Although the Taoist temple is located in a high mountain, it is also a flat life, the two of them rest at sunrise and sunset, eat, drink tea and take medicine, sometimes, go out together and travel a lot. Half a year later, the blacksmith went down the mountain, was able to eat and drink, and started his old business again.

On a cold day in 2008, Jiang Si left and lived to be 91 years old. Jiang Si was born in the Republic of China, and has been in the Republic of China all his life, full of study, with a big temper, and no children and no daughters.

None of his prescriptions remained, and they all disappeared with their masters. Blacksmith Wang tried to tell some memories to the people who asked him, but no one could decipher them, only that there was Poria cocos in medicine. Jiang Si is gone, and since then there is no Wufeng Temple, only Wufeng Mountain is still there.

Wufeng Mountain is opposite my house, and in terms of height, the two places seem to be equal, and there is a gorge river in the middle, several miles away. Sometimes the river dries up, sometimes rushes, and the two mountains are always calm, always so far away. It's been ten years, and I haven't climbed it again, and I can't climb it anymore.

On windy and rainy days, you can hear the pine waves on Wufeng Mountain, get up, spread far away, not only endlessly, you can see the clouds and mist on the top of the mountain, scattered, gathered, endless.

Hi Nian

Editor-in-charge: Xing Renyan