Legends in the mountains

(1)

My family lives in the Qinba Mountains in southern Shaanxi. The mountain where I grew up has never had a name, just like the people who live there are unknown to the outside world. Familiar. In my memory, the mountains are always lush and green, and the sky is as blue as a bright mirror.

The small village where I grew up is on the mountainside of that mountain. The altitude of that mountain should be at least more than a thousand meters, because every time I go out to go to the market, I have to walk 30 miles downhill. It is a place surrounded by mountains. As far as the eye can see, there are mountains all around, high, short, far and near. There is only a winding village road leading to the provincial road outside along the mountain pass.

The village where I live is on the southern slope of the mountain. There is a remaining stockade on the top of the mountain, all made of stones. There is a small mountain road from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain, with steep mountains along the way. When I was a kid, my friends and I herded cattle and sheep, this was our paradise.

The old people called it Shiba Village (later also called this mountain Shiba Village), because standing on this village, you can see the surrounding villages on the eighteen hills. I heard from older people that this village was the base of the guerrillas in this area. Someone in the village found a scrapped pistol here, and someone else found some bullet casings. Many stones on the stockade are densely covered with bullet holes.

The existing stockade has been destroyed, and many of the high stone walls have been destroyed. Standing on it, you can only see eight or nine surrounding stockades. The stockade is circular like the Colosseum in Rome, with two doors on the outside and holes in the stone wall for sentries to snipe. It looks like more than 40 square meters. There is only a thatched road leading up, and the northern, eastern and western slopes of the mountain are cliffs. But I really can’t figure out why they built their base on such a high mountain at that time, and where did the supplies come from.

There are three large and small caves on the cliff on the northern slope of the mountain. I heard from the old man that there are supernatural things in these caves. Legend has it that three men went into a cave with a hundred candles and never came out. When I was a kid, a few brave kids took me to climb in. It was as tall as a person and the three openings were connected. We lit torches and walked about 20 meters. We saw a mountain spring flowing in the cave. It was so cold and dark inside that we were all scared to retreat.

The old people said that there is a big python in this cave, which is dozens of meters long and as thick as a bucket. It has been practicing Taoism for thousands of years and is the patron saint of the mountain. Some people say that there is a monster in the cave. They hear strange noises coming from the cave every night late at night. It was the monster that caused people to disappear in the village. Some people say that this mountain is the sea-fixing needle blocked by the Dragon King on the eye of the sea. There is a tank of clear water deep in the cave, with two green dragons guarding it on both sides. If someone overturns this water tank, the eyes of the sea will be opened, and this place will become a vast ocean.

Some people also say that there is a treasure in this cave. It is a retired dignitary of the Qin Dynasty who hid his life's wealth here and has been sealed for thousands of years. The person who brought 100 candles in was a treasure hunter, but he did not come out and no one could confirm it.

Some people say that this cave leads to various surrounding hills and is a secret passage used by the guerrillas for communication.

These frightening legends did not create much fear in my childhood. Because the mountains have given me so many gifts. People in the mountains have been farming, herding sheep, and collecting medicine on the mountains for generations. I can clearly tell where something is on the mountain.

In spring, there are wild flowers all over the mountains and plains, including plum blossoms, mountain peach blossoms, forsythia flowers, apricot blossoms and other flowers. Summer is lush green, and there are green wheat seedlings in the mountains. The mountains in autumn are the most selfless. We can pick a lot of wild fruits on the mountains, including dark mountain grapes, bright red wild dates, furry kiwis, wild bananas with wide grins and chestnuts with hedgehogs. In winter, when the mountains are bare, people come to collect firewood and collect herbs. There are many precious herbs on the mountain, such as turmeric, gastrodia elata, bupleurum, yam, forsythia, schisandra and so on. People in the mountains eat from the mountains, and collecting herbs is a sideline business in addition to agriculture, and is also an important source of family economy.

Nowadays, I live in the hustle and bustle of the city and am used to the noise of the city.

The mountain is getting farther and farther away from me, but the tranquility of the mountain is becoming clearer and clearer. They are the flowers all over the mountains in spring, the chirping cicadas in summer, the abundant fruits in autumn, and the outline of the snow-capped mountains in winter.

(2)

Many strange things happened in the mountain village where I grew up. People still have a primitive respect for nature. There is a mountain temple in the mountains, a land temple at the entrance of the village, and a Dragon King temple at the end of the village. Some of the big stones that "show spirits" are even covered with red cloth. On every first and fifteenth day of the lunar month, there are always people going to offer sacrifices.

Oddly enough, when a piglet at home was sick, instead of buying medicine for the pig, the adults went to the Earth Temple to "pray." As a result, the piglet really recovered, and the adults went to "fulfil their wishes" again. Of course, every time I go, I bring the paper and sacrifices with me.

In years when there is a lack of rain, people go to the Dragon King Temple to pray for rain. The Dragon King is enshrined in the small earth temple with a wooden sign depicting an evil god. No one dares to blaspheme the gods. Anyone who speaks ill of the gods will be punished. We all believed it when we were kids.

During the Cultural Revolution, he called for "Down with the demons and demons." The understanding of rural people is to tear down temples. At that time, all the temples in the mountains were demolished, and the angry witches and gods set up spiritual shrines in their homes. I heard from the old man that many people suffered retribution at that time. For example, Er Gouzi's father was bedridden after he demolished the Earth Temple and went home to collect firewood. Li Laoliu demolished the Shan Temple and went up the mountain to collect firewood and was stoned to death. Chen Fugui dug up the old tomb where other people's spirits appeared and was haunted by ghosts.

Later, after the wind blew, people rebuilt the Earth Temple and the Dragon King Temple. Mountain people believed that these spirits could ensure good weather for their crops. In fact, in my opinion, these are some of their wishes for life.

Other supernatural stories are even more mysterious.

In a village two mountains away from the village where I live, there is a "fairy aunt" that everyone worships. People say that the fairy girl knows magic, can take back the soul after leaving the body, can also cure people's diseases, can pinch and do calculations, and has great magical powers. Therefore, her family was crowded with people from all over the country who came from all over the country to ask for a child, seek medical advice, and seek blessings. There is a big plaque on the door of her house that reads: All requests are answered. When I was a child, my aunt next door took my brother to ask for a longevity lock. It was tied with a red thread and hung around my neck. It was very beautiful. I heard that those who go to pray must offer "incense money" to the gods. There is no limit to the amount, but the minimum is ten yuan. They all say that the money is not for the fairy aunt, and the fairy aunt will not ask for it. Every time they go there, they put the money under the incense burner, and the gods take it away.

When I was about six years old, our village was haunted. Everyone said that whoever bumps into a ghost at night will be taken away by the ghost. People close their doors early at night and dare not go out. Later, the pigs, cattle, and sheep in the village were stolen one after another. Therefore, a vigorous ghost hunting campaign was launched, and later several people who came from other places to sell livestock were caught.

When I was eight years old, many prime-age laborers died in our village in a year, about a dozen of them, all of whom died in Shanxi coal mines. Funerals in the village happened one after another, and the village was filled with dark clouds of grief. A Taoist priest said that our village was cursed by a demon. The demon was an old tree spirit in the village. If the old tree spirit does not die, there will still be people in the village who will be cursed. Later, the Taoist priest instructed the villagers to cut down an ancient tree at the entrance of the village and burn it. Since then, no one in the village has died in a mining accident.

When he was ten years old, a young couple in the village had a grudge and the wife committed suicide by taking poison. Then someone heard a woman crying every night at her gravesite. The villagers said that it was the dead woman who was asking for her life, and later her husband also hanged himself. People said it was his wife who took him away.

There are many more things like this. When I was a child, I was afraid of these things and would never go out at night. As the level of knowledge and culture increases, the mysterious veil is gradually unveiled. Whether they are gods, ghosts or demons, they are synonymous with the inner thoughts of the farmers living on this land. Gods are the vision of a beautiful life, ghosts are secret profit transactions, and demons are things that people hate.

In this bizarre world, there are many phenomena that science cannot explain. Perhaps due to limited cognition, they attribute what they don't understand to superstition. Perhaps you are disappointed with reality and place your expectations on gods. At least we all admit that human beings are the unity of body and soul.

And these supernatural things are the elves of the soul world, who are born and die with thoughts.

Aohan on May 14, 2014