The Past in Northern Shaanxi: The Story of Water (7) - It’s Difficult to Jump in the Queue to Take a Bath

For three years in rural areas, we female educated youths have never had a hot bath. When it gets dirty in the winter, just put up with it, wipe it at most, and be satisfied if you can wash your hair. In the dog days of summer, people will sweat if they don't move, not to mention working under the scorching sun, which is really a "suffering". When I returned to the kiln after work in the summer, I still couldn't bear to wash it with water. The water in everyone's basin was almost overflowing to the bottom of the basin, and I could barely wet the towel, and then wiped it hastily.

We female educated youths often joke that we are about to become what Hou Baolin said in his cross talk: don’t wash the first, third, and fifth, and dry wipe the second, fourth, and sixth. People love to sweat in summer, and the dirt accumulated over several days makes their hair look like rolled-out felt. When they are rubbed casually on their bodies, they become tangled in mud. When they endure it to the limit, they miss half a day's work and go down to the ditch for a big wash.

I have bathed in ditches several times. It is far-fetched to say that it is a bath, because I am wearing underwear and underwear, and I have to choose a section of the river bed where the stone slabs protrude for easy concealment, in order to hide under the stone slabs and wash. When I was washing, I stood in the water under the flagstone and scrubbed quickly like a thief. There was a road above the flagstone. To prevent passers-by from seeing me, my girlfriend Guifen and I always took turns washing, leaving one person above to keep watch.

The sentry stood on top of the stone slab. When he met passers-by, no matter whether he knew them or not, he would greet them and talk to them. The purpose was twofold: first, to inform the bather: someone is passing by, so don't make any noise. The second is to distract passers-by. When the bather gets the signal, he will immediately stop scrubbing and press his body close to the side of the river bed to avoid danger.

Every time after taking a shower, we wash a lot of dirty clothes that have been accumulated for many days. Washing clothes in the river is much more convenient in summer than in winter. I often choose a large rock slightly above the water, sit on it, roll up my trouser legs, and put my feet in the water. When doing laundry, you only need to soap and scrub without rinsing, because as soon as the scrubbed clothes enter the water, they will be immediately scattered by the water flow. The flowing river water can rinse the clothes clean in an instant. In terms of rinsing efficiency, it is faster than the washing machines of twenty years later.

I don’t know how the local aunties take a bath and wash their hair. I have seen many of them using combs, because combs can not only remove grease and dirt, but also lice. Most of them go to the village pond to do laundry.

Speaking of waterlogging ponds, almost every village on the plateau has one. It was dug manually. It is actually a large pit with a diameter of 20 to 30 meters and an arc bottom, specially used to store rainwater. Villagers often go to the waterlogged pond to drink water for their animals, and most women are willing to go to the waterlogged pond to wash their clothes, which can save them the trouble of going up and down the mountain. The water in the flood pond is a pool of stagnant water, with a layer of green moss often floating on it. If it doesn't rain for a few days, not only will the water level drop, but it will also emit an unpleasant odor. We educated youth have never washed our clothes in a flood pond.

One day, my girlfriend Guifen and I went down the mountain to do laundry. When I was having a good time washing, two aunts came down to carry water. One of them was about fifty years old. People called her Lian Lian's mother. After she filled the bucket, she saw the soap suds I made from washing flowing along the washboard to the river. Inside, she said with infinite distress: "What a pity! What a pity! All the white flowers have flowed away." So she found a stone slab, pressed it against my washboard, and started washing face to face with me. She took off her apron and dipped her hands in it. She rubbed the soap suds I made on the stone slope, and after a while she took off the white cloth hat she wore on her head to wash it. Seeing the soap suds flowing continuously, she simply took off her coarse shirt and started washing it.

After taking off her top, her upper body was completely naked, and her two breasts were hanging deflated. She didn’t feel embarrassed at all. After washing her top, she saw that there was really nothing left to wash, so she took it off. The donkey pulled over and loaded the buckets, put the washed clothes on the two wooden buckets, drove the donkey naked, and went back satisfied.

Guifen said that the river water looked very clear, but in fact there were countless people washing clothes upstream, but we still drank from it. I said, then don’t the people downstream also drink the dirt we wash off and the soap suds we wash away? Guifen said, that's true, only those who live near the spring can drink truly clean water.