Go to Lianyuan Street to play

I don’t know when I started to be interested in the streets and alleys of Lianyuan. I often take some time to go to those roundabout places to have fun. I look here and there leisurely, peeking into other people's privacy like a thief, and snapping pictures of those shady scenery with my mobile phone. It makes people very embarrassed. Where did this weirdo come from? What are you doing taking these pictures?

As a migrant worker, doing these things is almost a luxury. It wasn't until I realized that I had inadvertently written these scenes into my article that I gradually realized that those humble things deep in the alleys were embellishing my inner world either overtly or covertly. The sparks created by listening, watching and accidental glances illuminated A certain call of human nature.

I was born and raised in Lianyuan, so I can’t remember how many times I walked around in the alleys, but I think there should be some evidence to follow. If you want to study it in detail, it can be divided into four stages. During my childhood, adolescence, middle age and old age, I had the experience of walking in these alleys repeatedly, consciously or unconsciously. As a child it was almost impossible for me to move alone and I had no idea where the streets were. Even if I knew it, I would not dare to act rashly. Firstly, I was worried about losing myself. Secondly, I was afraid that my strict father would break my legs. My father was a poor farmer with a good family background, and he raised me to be a law-abiding dog. I am in awe of the bustling downtown, and the streets and alleys have become the paradise I yearn for, and I long to visit the city one day. Going out on the streets at that time was something worth showing off. In that era of material scarcity, there was no desire in the mind. Apart from working at sunrise and resting at sunset, they were trying to find ways to fill their stomachs and allow life to multiply.

Every time my father tied a rope on a pole and carried a snakeskin bag into the city to buy fertilizer, pick pigs, and collect grain, I would cry and make noises and want to follow him to the streets, but my father didn’t mind. I was too young, that is, the journey was far away and there was nothing to do. Why should I follow him? They always tried to stop me by buying steamed buns and preserved eggs.

My father wandered the streets all day and did not enter the house until sunset. After putting down the burden, I didn't have time to breathe or wipe the sweat, so I hurriedly took out a cold and hard sugar bun from my pocket. I couldn't put it down while holding the bun. I looked left and right. After seeing enough, I picked up my fingers and peeled off the skin bit by bit. After confirming that it was correct, I carefully put it into my mouth and chewed it slowly. Enjoy this delicacy in the world and try your best to bring out a little bit of sweetness to make others envious. A five-cent bun, spent all afternoon. That kind of faint happiness is exquisite and hearty, and even some memories remain on the tip of my tongue a few years later. These vague marks may awaken my yearning for a better life at any time.

It must have been April when my father took me to the streets for the first time. The fourth month of the lunar calendar is the season when wheat matures. The mountains and valleys are covered with yellow, and the heavy joy rises and falls with the wind, making people excited and excited. Everyone went up to the mountain with a sickle, knocking down the ears of wheat, like nibbling away at the mulberry field, like wind and residual clouds. In a few days, the wilderness was tidied up. Bundle up the wheat straw and stack it under the eaves in front of the door. Take advantage of the night to take off the wheat grains, dry them in the sun, and then pick them to the grain station to exchange them for rice and noodles. The ears of wheat constantly hit the bamboo sieve in the trip bucket, making a bang bang bang bang sound. This sound comes one after another, thick and steady, restrained and rhythmic, like a folk music ensemble, playing the countryside night. Warm and peaceful. Occasionally, a few dogs barking and a few insects chirping can be heard.

I was born in April, and with a "wow" sound, I popped out like a grain of wheat. With the faint fragrance of wheat and the joy of harvest, my father was so happy that he couldn't open his mouth from ear to ear. This was the late 1960s, when the Cultural Revolution was coming to an end. The two are combined into one to give the dog a name. Xiao Wen Xiao Wen, Xiao is the Xiao of Wheat, and Wen is the Wen of the Cultural Revolution. The wheat harvest was abundant and civil strife was pacified, giving it a certain historical connotation.

After threshing and drying the wheat, you have to take it to the grain station to exchange for rice. The wheat grain is rough and not tasty. There was only one grain station in the county where people could exchange grain, and people who wanted to exchange grain piled up like a mountain. The queues stretched outside the station, and fights often occurred, with some being killed or injured. My father was a martial artist and was very interested in this. He described it vividly and vividly, which was both horrifying and exciting. Especially when he talked about those martial arts masters, they didn't even need to eat. (The station on the main street is the famous Lotus Leaf Grain Station.)

In order to avoid the peak period, my father got up early, loaded bags of wheat onto a cart, and pulled the wheat bags to Depart for Heye Grain Station. The spring scenery is full of beauty, the sunshine is quiet, and the flowers and grass are green. Gentle breeze, bright sun, wild flowers blooming on both sides of the country road, I can't hold back my inner excitement. This is a rare experience in the city.

Now that I think about it, it seems to have some sense of ritual. It's like going to the stage to receive an award, going to a new school to study, like a flower girl sitting in a sedan chair. Walking through the fields where birds are singing and flowers are fragrant, and you walk into the depths of joy, you will smell the breath of youth.

I took Maizi to the street in the dark. When I arrived at the store, the iron door hadn't been opened yet, and the door was crowded with people. It is said that there is an acquaintance at the Lotus Leaf Grain Station, and he used to work in the Furong Warehouse behind the house. The person was a woman and her relatives didn't recognize her. Everyone called her an ungrateful dog. She barked sweetly when asking for help. The eldest sister was short, and now the eldest sister refused to be weighed when she asked for help. I went to her office to take a look and saw that she was having nothing to do and chatting happily with others. She didn't even look at me. I spit at her and returned to my father's side. Dad didn't go looking for her, he just queued up obediently, and after queuing for a while, he moved the wheat bag forward. I queued from morning to afternoon and successfully exchanged wheat. However, only a few hundred kilograms of rice were exchanged for several hundred kilograms of wheat. It was a heavy cart when it arrived, but only a light bag was left when it returned. Despite this, my father was still full of joy. He pulled me around the street on a cart. When he passed a steamed bun shop, he asked me if I wanted to eat steamed buns. When I passed a fruit shop, he asked me if I wanted to eat fruit. When I passed a noodle shop, he asked me if I wanted to eat noodles. I said no. Eat, don't eat, don't eat, he took me back and walked almost to the edge of the city. He stopped slowly, placed the trolley on the side of the street, took me into a noodle shop, ordered two bowls of noodles, and found a place to sit by the door. He put the noodles in front of me and asked me to eat, but I didn't dare to eat, so he took the chopsticks and reduced the noodles into a bowl, leaving only a little soup for himself. He urged me to eat while looking at the cart outside the door. I had no choice but to suck and eat the noodles. This noodle was so delicious, but I ate it too quickly and couldn't taste the taste. I still can't accurately express the aroma. I just know that it tastes so good that I still want to eat it. But I couldn't help but stop using my chopsticks, pretending to be full, deliberately burping a few times, and touching my full belly with my hands to make my father happy. My father seemed to have noticed the clues and repeatedly urged me to finish the noodles in the bowl. I refused to eat, and he scolded me for being useless and unable to finish the noodles. After saying that, he picked up the bowl and ate up the rest of my noodles, not even a drop of soup was left. The hungry look on my father's gluttonous face actually made me feel pity for him.

In fact, it is difficult to eat noodles when you go out with your father on the street. I only remember eating noodles once. Mostly they eat preserved eggs and biscuits. I remember that preserved eggs are very cheap, only a few cents each. The outside is covered with thick rice husks, yellow mud and lime. You have to wash them repeatedly under the tap of the tap water or by the Lianshui River before you can see the eggshells, which look black when cracked. The jelly is cold and a little numb on the tongue. My father said it was delicious, so he couldn't help but buy a few more and take them back to his family to try.

After I went to school in the city, I had more opportunities to go shopping. I ran along the streets in the morning and visited all the streets and alleys. There was no corner or alley that I didn’t understand.

After many years, whenever I think back to those cold mornings, wearing a vest and shorts, shaking my body and crawling out from under the rusty iron gate of the school gate, facing the cold wind and stepping on the white snow, Running lightly in the streets and alleys, I feel that it is an extremely precious life experience. Empty streets, quiet environment, no hustle and bustle of philistines, no worldly worries, only cheerful footsteps walking like clockwork, from darkness to light, from youth to middle age, everything is in a dream, only the wind wakes up The tree is awake, and the snowflakes are constantly flying.

Go east along Renmin Road, pass by Sixty Pavilions, Seventy Pavilions, Eighty Pavilions, Ninety Pavilions, arrive at Shima Mountain, go around the mountain fields, and follow the messy vegetable patches. Go south, go up Meizi Bridge from the Tea Factory, cross the Lianshui River along Shuangjiang Back Street, pass the Rice Factory along the old street, turn north from the gate of the Iron Factory, turn into Zhongshan Back Street, and return to Guangming Mountain along Xinjian Street , return to the school gate from Renmin Road. It took less than two hours to go around the city for more than 30 to 40 miles, just in time for morning exercises. I was not late and was not criticized or punished.

The most visited ones are Guangming Mountain, Xinjian Street, Zhongshan Back Street and Old Street. There is a large playground in Guangming Mountain. The county often holds public trials and criticism meetings. When a condemned prisoner is executed, all the teachers and students in the school will be organized to watch it, to receive legal education, to see those dull eyes, and to listen to the sonorous and powerful rebuke of the bailiff. drink. Kneel down, kneel down, sweep your feet across the floor, and hear the sound of your knees hitting the ground. The thump is like a long-lasting tremor in your heart. There is also a post office in Guangming Mountain, and there is a barber shop in front of the post office.

I often go to the post office to buy magazines and mail letters. After I finish mailing the letters, I go to the barber shop. The barber shop is owned by my cousin. My cousin’s house is nearby. I go north along Zunshi Road in front of the shop, cross the Shengping River, and walk from the wine shop. The factory is less than a hundred meters away. That place is called Panlong Bay. It is quite a bay, but I don’t know where Longpan is.

My cousin treats me very well and says hello as soon as I come in. He greets me when I'm busy, and helps me make tea when I'm free. I said I won’t drink the tea anymore, I’m here to get a haircut. After saying that, she sat down on the chair, and she didn't stop her. She put the apron on me and asked me if I should keep it longer or cut it shorter. I said it was of any length, so she started to cut it, and only trimmed off the hair around my ears. It was trimmed very delicately, and very patiently, like a pretty boy, more like an old man.

After finishing it, I paid her wages, but she didn’t want it. She said her relatives didn’t accept money. I said relatives or not, radishes cost 30 cents per load. A haircut costs the shop rent and electricity bill. If you don’t get paid, I won’t dare to come for a haircut next time. She accepted it, and she received less than others, which made me smile. My relatives were particularly different.

Turn south from the barber shop to Xinjian Street. Xinjian Street is a long and narrow alley. There is a small pond at the corner. There are no fish in the pond. Sometimes the water is deep, sometimes shallow, and sometimes it is dry and black garbage can be seen. That place is called Liujiawan, and it is the richest place on Lantian Street. There is a saying that people in Liujiawan find it ugly, but people in Liangjiawan cannot get it. This is a dialect, and its meaning is that the things that are despised by the people in Liujiawan are exactly what the people in Liangjiawan dream of. This shows how big the gap between rich and poor is.

Going down from Liujiawan is the back street of Zhongshan, which is a prosperous area of ??the city, filled with people and a sea of ??people. The jagged and abrupt shops are eye-catching, the carved wooden railings are eye-catching, and the blue bricks and black tiles are not only shops, but also civilization, the wind and rain, the old-fashioned philistine, and the rhythm of the times. The development history of an old street and a city has stirred up turmoil with the changes in the situation.

There are many bridges on the street, all of them are stone bridges, one every three to five hundred meters, like a jade ring on the water, the Lianshui is like a slender Guanyin hand, and the sound of Buddha pops up in the soup. The bridge is not wide, and there are vendors and fortune tellers sitting there. They all huddled up and made way for others, those who were crossing the river were crossing the river, those who were reading their horoscopes were reading their horoscopes, and those who were bargaining were haggling.

I don’t read the horoscopes and don’t bargain. I just want to cross the river to have fun. Go to the old cinema to watch a movie, go to the Qiaotou Noodle House to eat a bowl of noodles, and go to a roundabout place where there are low toilets for my convenience.

The stone road is not very neat, with high and low heights like piano keys. Each stone has a different origin, and each stone will make a different sound. The whole alley is empty, like a trombone. Send the low echo far away. A tarpaulin was set up in the distance across the alley. Someone was holding a funeral, playing and playing, and it was very lively. The alley was blocked and the passers-by were forced to move elsewhere.

The buildings on the street are old, and most of the tile eaves are broken and collapsed, scattering the rubble on the ground. Many brick walls have also collapsed and are in pieces. Warning slogans are written on the walls that have not completely collapsed: Dangerous buildings have collapsed, please do not approach, danger, danger. Danger is danger, but there are still people living in the room, drinking by the fire. The east wall of the house stands diagonally, with the upper end leaning against someone else's wall and the lower end supported by a wooden head. The west wall leans toward the west and also leans against someone else's wall. It tore two cracks in the middle wall, like a sweet potato split open. I gasped in fright. I don’t know how long this wall will last. If it falls down one day, this family will be very happy.

Looking back, I walked around Lianyuan Bus Station again. I found that this place is more lively, although the streets have not changed, the minibuses have not changed, and the public toilets are free. But there are more and more beauty salons and foot-washing centers, and there are more and more people who quietly call you in to have fun. Lianyuan people are very hospitable. In the past, when they saw acquaintances passing by, they would yell at them to come in and have a good time before leaving. Now when they see strangers passing by, they will also start to call people to come in and have a good time. Several people will shout at the same time, as if they are afraid that they will run away. I didn't have the time to get high, and I couldn't afford to get high, so I had to look at them inexplicably. These people are in their thirties and not very attractive. The makeup on their faces is so thick that they look like the adobe walls of my house. The plaster has peeled off and will collapse at any time.

I couldn’t help laughing and waved to them: Hi, hey, hey.