Xiangxi: The secret of longevity village (2. Filial Son

Text/Zhang Zhicheng ? Picture/Peng Nanke

It happened to be the Double Ninth Festival when I wrote this paragraph. Let me first talk about a filial son I met in Modao Village.

The car passed the hanging pumpkin and walked a little further. There was a courtyard on the high ridge on the right. Next to it was a brick house with green tiles and yellow walls and white walls. It was not a Miao village architectural style. Two large tweeters were hung on the eaves, and a flagpole was erected next to it, with a national flag flying. I got out of the car and took a closer look. It was the village headquarters.

Nanke called the village chief, told us our location, and then stood under the eaves of the village headquarters and waited. I couldn't help but look around and take pictures with my tablet. Nanke was very calm. He had been here once before. He was from Guzhang and often visited the Miao village. After a while, two middle-aged men came from a distance, waving from afar.

Nanke walked down the hill to greet them. The ones who came were the village chief Liu Chaoqian and the village party secretary Fu Tianjun. Nanke didn't know them. After a brief self-introduction, we went into the small village meeting room and had a chat.

We will talk about the basic situation in the village later, but first let’s talk about the famous filial son.

The eldest person in Modao Village is an old lady named Li Yanxiang, 101 years old. Nanke and I proposed to go see this old birthday boy first. The village chief said that the old man was in the same group as him, the knife sharpening group. The party secretary and the village chief took us there.

After passing countless irregular bluestone roads, turning left and right, we arrived at the old lady’s house.

It was a small courtyard built with adobe bricks and wooden structures, with a patio in the middle. It was a bit like a courtyard house in Beijing, but smaller. The courtyard door in particular is very small, about the same size as a single door in an urban home. Three or four strips of bluestone form a trapezoidal step, covering the threshold. The door frame is made of good material and is very square. The walls on both sides of the door are piled with dead wood branches, which are used as fuel for daily life. Firewood is used for cooking and boiling water here. It is probably also used for heating in winter. Autumn is here and winter is not far away.

Looking in through the door frame, a ray of sunlight shines in the yard, which is very quiet and peaceful.

Nanke and the others went in first. My speed is much slower, everything is so fresh and beautiful, I take photos as I walk.

I entered the yard and looked around. Some were messy, some were dilapidated, but also very warm. There are several pumpkins piled up in a corner, old pumpkins and green pumpkins. I am not sure whether the green ones are tender. A rope was covered with tobacco leaves. Looking through the viewfinder of the tablet, I saw that the rope was blocked by a bamboo pole. I thought it was drying on the bamboo pole.

Almost all men in Miao Village, especially the elderly, like to smoke. They also chop the tobacco leaves themselves and then smoke them into a trumpet rolled with paper or made of long bamboo poles. Sweat pipe, lit and smoked at the same time. These raw tobacco leaves that have not been refined are said to be much stronger than cigarettes. If you don't know how to smoke, taking a puff may make you choke with tears and runny nose, and it is also intoxicating.

Nanke called me to come up quickly.

Go up a wooden staircase on the right hand side of the old birthday star's home. There seems to be another house in the middle. The door is closed and the doors and windows are in tatters.

Climbing up the wooden ladder, following Nan Ke’s voice, we went up to a small attic on the right. The corridor is very narrow, and only a slightly fatter person can pass it unobstructed. A small window was covered with thick paper, and the light was dim.

The old birthday boy was sitting on the ground, with a quilt and quilt, which was very simple. As I got closer, I realized that the curtain opened by the village party secretary was not a window, but a door. It's not like a door. It's too small and short. It's a bit like the cabin of a Shaoxing awning boat.

The old man leaned forward and stuck his head out to talk to them. I couldn't understand the Miao dialect spoken by the birthday girl. The party secretary translated, she said I don’t have good cigarettes to entertain you, sorry.

The old man’s voice is not loud, his speech is clear, and his demeanor is very kind.

I asked briefly about the situation, and the birthday girl said that her ears were not working properly.

After leaving the small attic, I deliberately looked at what the old birthday girl was eating.

There is a stove in the main room. The fire has been extinguished. On top of some charcoal made of dry firewood, there is a small modern pot with a handle. I opened the lid and saw some leftover rice, a few pieces of bacon, and some vegetables. The village chief said that this is what the birthday girl eats. If she is hungry, she will come here to heat it up before eating. I was a little surprised and asked where were the children and grandchildren of the old birthday star? The village chief said that he had his son by his side and should go out to work.

I entered another side door, which was the kitchen. There was a wok for cooking, and a pressure cooker that burned black. There were no gaskets inside, and no pressure reducing valve could be found. A similarly black cooking pot was placed diagonally on the high stove, with several pieces of bacon smoked to a black soot hanging above the stove mouth. There are some dry firewood and dead branches around the stove.

I turned around and came out. The village chief opened an enamel cup, which was evenly dyed dark brown from the bottom to the top of the cup. It was visually the same as smeared with ink. That thick layer of tea stains will probably accumulate over the years. The knife sharpener drinks a lot of tea and a lot of salt. He likes to drink a big bowl of home-brewed rice wine and chew bacon.

After hearing and seeing these facts, I was very confused. From the perspective of modern medicine, the eating habits of the people in Modao Village did not seem to be a healthy way to maintain health. However, they have lived like this all their lives, even for generations. Came here like this.

The birthday girl came out of the attic, Nanke was taking pictures, and I quickly chose an angle to take a few pictures. There is basically nothing you can do when shooting in dimly lit areas with a tablet, as the subject will become blurred if he blinks.

In the attic corridor, a somewhat stooped figure walked slowly while holding on to the wooden wall, saying polite words as he walked.

I am worried that she will fall. The village chief said no, she had always taken care of herself like this, and her son had to go out to do things. Nanke asked her again, where is her son? The village party secretary didn't answer the question, saying that her son was a filial son. Whenever it was cold, he would sleep with his old mother, warm her bed and cover her feet. I thought I heard it wrong and asked a question. The village chief must have said that this was the case. For a long time, since the old man became afraid of the cold, his son would accompany his mother to sleep. My eyes are a little moist. When it comes to human nature and love for our mother, we are far inferior to this Miao village man in the mountains.

After coming out of the old longevity house, we went to the village headquarters again. I asked the party secretary and the village chief to make a list of the elderly people over 70 years old in the village, and asked for the names of their age, gender, and group of residence.

Nanke has always wanted to take a photo of the birthday girl and her son. We divided the work. He went to the birthday girl’s house to wait for her son, and I continued to interview the elderly in Modao Village about their living conditions.

The party secretary and the village chief called to verify one by one, and I carefully read the profile of Mo Dao Village on the wall.

Modao Village is located in the southeast of Guzhang County, bordering Luxi County and Jishou City. There are 6 natural villages in the village: Modao, Baiyang, Tianmen, Ciqiu, Biezhou, and Huayan, which are divided into 8 villager groups. In addition to the first 6 natural villages, there are also Fujia Group and Hebian Group. The village has 265 households and 1,418 people.

Judging from the data, the cut-off date for these data is 2013. The per capita net income that year was 1,850 yuan. The village had a large number of poor people, and it was a typical remote and poor ethnic minority settlement. The party secretary said the numbers haven't changed much. The village chief said that no one in the knife sharpening team had died in many years.

The party secretary and the village chief wrote down their names one by one, and there was an old man who kept calling to help check. His name is Wang Debai, 72 years old. I don’t know if the number is correct, because there is another 70-year-old named Liu Tinggui's old man has also been accompanying us for interviews. He took Nanke to the birthday girl's home.

While the party secretary and village chief were counting, I went to the village alone for a walk. When they came back, they said that after counting, there were 127 people over 70 years old in the village, including 7 people over 90 years old, 35 people between 80 and 90 years old, and the rest were between 70 and 80 years old.

I asked them to check the names of the elderly people photographed on the tablet. The village chief, the party secretary, was surprised to find that many of them were not included in the statistics. He immediately verified the names of the elderly people in the picture and finally determined that there were 133 people. I think this is definitely still an incomplete statistic.

Nanke was very happy when he came back. He said that when he went there, he photographed the son of the old man helping others repair the roof.

I was shocked. This son must be quite a lot of age.

I asked the village chief and he was really 70 years old and his name was Liu Tingjin.

I quickly looked at the photos taken by Nanke. The picture is shocking, showing an energetic and thin old man with a smile on his face. What shocked me was the pair of shoes on his feet, those Jiefang shoes that couldn't be fastened tightly despite countless strings. They were much better than the ones I picked up from the trash can in Changsha.

This was not the only thing that shocked me. I suddenly remembered that the old longevity star also had a pair of shoes at the entrance of the "Chuangcang". They were a pair of Jiefang shoes that were not very clean and rarely damaged. They belonged to 70-year-old Liu Tingjin. A hundred-year-old woman's shoes. In order to let his mother have a pair of good shoes to wear, he would rather wear tattered shoes to help others repair their houses and pick out leaks.

Are there many such filial sons?

The title picture shows the old longevity star mother and son. Other pictures are related to the text.

(To be continued)