On peasant workers' bands

Everyone has memories of his hometown in his heart, perhaps a wonderful childhood, perhaps growing up in want and pain.

However, most of you who have been away from home for many years can't go back, because your hometown has long lost its place: your hometown and you have become two galaxies that can never be merged.

Why should it be the most familiar hometown, but often "afraid of being close to home" makes people feel strange? That's because we really have too little gaze and observation on our hometown.

Therefore, when the reader first opened the book Cliff: My Country and My People, he said: Everyone who leaves his hometown in China should look back at his hometown at least once like this book. Only in this way can we truly understand our society and the whole life.

The Cliff Edge: My Country and My People contains many scholars' expositions on exploring the vitality and vigor of returning home writing in the new period. The protagonists in the book, from scholars to migrant workers' bands, from seal cutting artists to documentary directors, from essayists to peasant writers, from parenting sisters to Zhong Nanshan hermits, lead us to stare at the past, today and tomorrow of "hometown" with plain words.

I believe that every story in it can touch your heart. Today, we will share with you my hometown and my people: the history of a family, written by non-fiction writer Zhang Ziyi. In the article, she described the course and feelings of her family entering the city life after nearly a hundred years and three generations' struggle.

My hometown and my people: the historical changes of a family

Text | Zhang Ziyi

(Excerpted from Cliff Edge: My Country and My People)

In the deep winter of 20 17, the vegetation in Hexi corridor was bleak and frozen. People, animals and trees are all curled up, and only after winter can everyone stretch out.

"Your elder sister-in-law passed away." I was a little nervous when my father called. Elder sister-in-law is the first child of grandparents. She is only 19 years younger than grandma. Twenty-eight years after grandma died, she also went to another world. More than 60 years old, because of acute appendicitis, heaven and man have been separated forever since then. If you are in the city, this is only a small operation. The doctor in the city asked the patient that the history of appendicitis surgery has always been just an ordinary operation.

My hometown, a small village in the Hexi Corridor in the middle of the Silk Road, reached its peak in the 1980s. Hundreds of families are arranged in a "well" shape, and each family is an adobe wall, which is more comfortable. The gables of the house are made of bricks, and the ochre bricks are arranged neatly, beaming and expensive.

The village is surrounded by large fields, and poplars grow on the ridges. In summer, the village is lush outside. In the village, the sun often shines naked on people's faces, and only under the shade of a few trees can it become a small conference hall. When people have a rest, they will sit under the tree and chat with bowls, while children will crawl around the earth wall to make it smooth and flat. I am one of those children who are crawling around.

He entered the city at the age of 6, went to kindergarten, and went to primary school at the age of 7. Since then, the countryside has drifted away from me, but people in the countryside have always been inextricably linked with me. In The Code of Love, I read the local culture in middle age. On the time axis, it reflects the history of a family's transition from rural to urban.

0 1 Bai Yueguang under Qilian Mountain

I have never seen such a big and white moon again.

Lying on the blanket in the yard on an autumn night, the moon hangs brightly in the air like a big silver plate. I have never seen a silver plate. This sentence was taught to me by my aunt in primary school.

She taught me word by word in broken Mandarin. When I stuttered and couldn't make it clear, I was annoyed and shouted to my grandmother, "Mom, listen, this baby can't even make it clear."

In fact, her Mandarin is also stuttering, and some sounds are wrong, but we just didn't know it at that time.

Grandpa also moved a small bench to sit in the yard. As a national cadre, he is the only one in the whole small village.

He sat well, didn't stagger, didn't lean back, and all the ugly gestures didn't appear on him Later, my dad always asked me to sit and stand, and slapped me because I was eating at the table. Maybe when I was a child, my grandfather took pictures of my father and aunts.

Like sitting posture, grandpa is also very particular about washing. Every time he washes his face, he grabs me and plays around in the yard, wiping my forehead, wiping my eyes, wiping my nose, mouth, face and two dirty hands with a white towel. Then, like a happy dog calf, he ran behind the old yellow dog in the yard to make trouble.

When the moon is full, watermelons are ripe from the ground. Grandpa doesn't grow watermelons at home. Relatives more than 30 miles away from the town plant more than ten acres of watermelon every year. As soon as the watermelon is ripe, pull a cart for us with a donkey cart. "In summer, children always eat watermelons. In addition, August 15 is coming. On the 15th, you will kill a watermelon for your ancestors. "

I know we are the same ancestor as him. Although he is older than my father, we are peers, and the word in the middle of the name is "Zi". So every time he goes to grandma's house, he always calls out my name, "Zhang Ziyi! Zhang Ziyi! " It seems that the relationship has become closer with such a shout.

There are some pears and apples at home, which are also brought by relatives. We live in the town. Everyone has only one acre and five points, and they can only grow wheat as rations. Relatives live in a rich and fertile place, but they all seem to envy their grandparents' life. Every time I come, I am stiff and enthusiastic, stuffing me with some fruit and pulling me to talk affectionately. Then I will go to grandpa's hall to drink water and talk about things. Grandma will put two spoonfuls of sugar at the bottom of the teacup, and when the sweet sugar tea is finished, the chatterbox will open.

Grandma wants to make moon cakes in advance.

The moon cakes on the Hexi Corridor are big wheels.

Layers of oil and sugar, as well as green Sophora alopecuroides, rose petals, turmeric, monascus and flax, are wrapped in noodles and placed on a steamer, and a thin layer of skin is covered on it to prevent steam from dripping on the surface of the moon cake, which will be peeled when it is cooked. Finally, the moon cakes were carried by several young men and placed in a cauldron with boiling water on the stove. Such a big moon cake needs to be steamed all afternoon before it is fully steamed. Steamed moon cakes can't be eaten immediately, and the best one should be put on August 15.

That day, grandma first cut a big watermelon into a zigzag shape, then washed a plate of apples, pears and grapes, and put several plates of peanut seeds and fruit candy. When all these things were ready, I went to the kitchen, took out the prepared moon cakes with my aunt, cut off the middle piece in the square, put it on a plate, carefully stretched out my arm and walked to the middle of the yard, and put this plate of moon cakes squarely in the middle.

After the sacrifice to the moon, everyone can eat.

My sister-in-law likes to eat watermelon moon cakes. I took the opportunity to put the fruit candy in my trouser pocket, and my grandmother would taste a moon cake: "I wonder if my hair is sour." Although grandma has never sour a moon cake for many years, as a housewife, grandma is worried about the same problem every year. Because, if the moon cake is sour, it will affect the dignity of a housewife.

Grandpa broke off a handful of melon seeds, ate some grapes and tasted one or two moon cakes. Raise your wrist and look at the time: "It's nine o'clock, and the TV you are watching is about to start." There are already many neighbors' children in the yard. Hearing this sentence, it was like a soldier who was instructed to rush into the hall. Every day's TV series comes as scheduled at this moment.

Later, I went to study in the city, and I never saw such a round and big moon in the yard on August 15th.

One August 15, my grandfather passed away. It was in the mid-1990s, and since then, there has been no one behind me.

02 scattered "dandelion"

Grandma didn't expect that when she fled the city, her descendants actually went to the city.

Around 2000, when I was in junior high school, my elder sister-in-law, the younger son who should have been adopted by my family, went to the army. My sister's brother and sister got married, and my second sister's brother went to Xinjiang, and they became adults at once. At the funeral of my grandfather's death, the brother who took a handful of peanuts from behind and put them in my hand suddenly became an adult.

I went to Lanzhou to study, and a few years later my second aunt's daughter went to Hebei to study. My uncle's son, who went to Hohhot to study in university, stayed in the local railway bureau after graduation, and now even my sister-in-law's daughter is studying in a normal school. My brother, go further, go to Cuba first, and then go to Spain. Perhaps, he will be the first doctor in our family.

Brothers and sisters are like dandelions in their hands. As soon as the wind blew, we all dispersed.

But we set out in the same direction.

All people take root, blossom and bear fruit in the corner of the city along the track of "entering the city" through further studies, marriage and various ways.

During this period, the urbanization process in China is the fastest and most obvious. Big cities show a very obvious siphon effect, and people are trapped and pushed to find better career choices. In other words, it is the instinct of all animals to find a better birthplace for the next generation, and it is also the physiological instinct to promote human progress.

Three generations of China people are farmers.

This nation, which has a history of thousands of years of farming culture, was gradually broken from the late Qing Dynasty and was promoted by global industrialization. People move from rural areas to cities actively or passively, and people are at a loss in the barren industrial forest.

The severe winter added a sad atmosphere to the elder sister-in-law's funeral.

It was one night and I was sitting in her yard. People were noisy and silent, and their eyes suddenly became viewfinders. This small yard has become a lens, changing and moving. I suddenly jumped out of the crowd and looked at all this. I couldn't restrain rows of words in my mind. As a writer, I never take the people around me as material, but at that moment, the words in my mind rolled neatly in rows. They are alive, they pop up automatically in my mind, they are generating scenes, and they are writing by themselves. I suppressed this automatic generation in fear. In the face of such sadness, any written description is a blasphemy against my feelings.

The words in my mind finally stopped, and finally a sentence came out: "Life is full of plants and trees."

At that moment, I suddenly understood the original intention of the funeral procession: "Let more living people know about death and disperse it with noise."

But in cities, people avoid talking about death and are afraid of it, thinking that if they avoid talking about death, it will disappear.

Someone can still recognize me. The woman who cooked looked up at me and said, "Isn't this Zhang XX?" Yes, the boss's girl. Others asked me curiously if I was married. They have forgotten my approximate age, only vaguely remember that I am about the same age as the girls and boys in XX family.

I have been forgotten by the people in the village, my friends, and they have entered the city one after another.

Postscript: Without my hometown, my back is barren.

My father always said that when I retire, I will go back to my hometown to support the elderly.

Father has his own village. Father's village is grandpa's village.

Father's village has not changed. Some old people died and some children were born, but the village is still a village.

The village where my father lived for 20 years is barely my hometown. I have lived there firmly for seven years. Then, like a bird, I flew away. If there were some familiar faces to greet when I walked on the street there ten years ago, now I have become a stranger to that place. Those tall buildings that don't know when to get up, those barbecue stalls scattered in alleys, and those who talk and laugh loudly in dialects, like the opposite side seen through the glass, have become a completely strange world to me.

For a few moments, I was so jealous of people with hometown. It's like, when they look back after being wronged, there is still a gentle hug, but I don't. Behind me, it's deserted.

I can't turn back, I can only go forward, go forward desperately, and be my strongest backing.

A year after the death of my elder sister-in-law, news came from my hometown: the yard built by my grandfather was going to be demolished. There is an overall plan here to build a freezer, which is a very small infrastructure project in the "Belt and Road". For people who have left their homes, this is an unexpected ancestral wealth. People are laughing and planning to buy a house in the city so that children can receive a good education. Even they were city residents from the beginning. For the new generation, the life-long migration and struggle of grandparents and fathers is a distant past, and they were born in "Rome" from the beginning.

People's ambitions and desires will naturally urge us to migrate to more distant and fresh places, but at this moment, this family in the northwest countryside has completely completed its initial urbanization.

When I was a child, I often looked up at the smoke from the kitchen and the yellow sunset at dusk in winter, which was the tenderest moment in the countryside. After a hard day's work, people go from their fields to villages. When I grow up, I sometimes look up at the sun in a foreign land. Under the smog in Beijing, I once really saw the sunset like salted duck eggs in Wang Zengqi's works, but at that moment, the loneliness and helplessness in my heart seemed to swallow me up like that dusk. No one knocked on the washbasin and shouted, "Tiangou ate the moon!" " "

The moon will not show its face to look at me again, but will only let itself get through the vast night and see the white light on the horizon.

In a foreign land, all nights are like huge monsters, and all dreams have suspicious people. I resist all the ghosts in my dream, fear and fatigue.

Sartre said that others are hell.

Su Xiaomei said, you are what you see.

I have to say in dismay that I am a person without a hometown, so don't bully me.

About this book

The theme of the first issue of Cliff Edge is "Hometown", which includes the discussions of scholars (Zhang Xiaode, Han Shaogong, Zhu Dongli, Huang Deng, Lu, Huang Zhiyou, etc. On exploring the vitality and vigor of returning home writing in the new period; On-the-spot report on the spontaneous organization of "culture going to the countryside" by migrant workers in Picun village: seal artist He Xiaoyi cooperated with rural craftsmen to print diaries with cast iron; The introduction of the documentary "Class 4, Grade 3" Lu Chunqiao tells the story of people's resilience and strength ten years after the Wenchuan earthquake. Zhang Ziyi, a non-fiction writer, tells the story that his family entered the city life through the struggle of three generations in the past century. The life experience (personal social life history) in the second half of the 20th century written by farmer Yan Ruiming; Wang Youde, a Mu Us desert control expert who was praised as "a miracle in the history of sand control in the world" by United Nations environmental experts, spent half his life; The pain and hope in the process of Xi's "Village in the City" transformation: a troupe of rivers and lakes, put forward some thoughts on the revival of traditional culture. The return of "new farmers" (new youth in contemporary rural construction); Sister-in-law Fan, who is famous for her article "I am a Fan", and the writers and painters who became popular because of "Living Poetically", have deeply explored people's confusion, adjustment, struggle and struggle in rural society in the transitional period in the form of short essays.