Just a few days ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the "Wenling Writers' Prose Creation Symposium". Although I have little contact with literature these years, I am still happy to go there in such a hot summer. After all, you don't have to pay for food and drink. It is a good thing to live in an air-conditioned room every day.
The place chosen by the friends of Wenling Federation of Literary and Art Circles is a well-known tourist area-Fangshan Scenic Area. Although I know that place, I have never been there. All I know is that it is a mountain. There is a college on the hill. A famous writer once studied here, so this college is famous.
Sitting in the Buick business car of Wenling Federation of Literary and Art Circles, we drove all the way. An hour later, we arrived at Fangshan. When I got off the bus and looked around, suddenly, a familiar kindness came to my face. In front of me, the mountains are green, the birds are singing cicadas, the pines are bursting, and the water is flowing. Between pine and bamboo, a few corners of the blue tile red wall. I can't help feeling excited. This familiar sight is that I have returned to my hometown!
My hometown is also in a series of high and low hills and winding streams. It is a little-known mountain village in southeastern Hubei-Baiju Village. I haven't verified when that mountain village settled in Chengzhuang. I only remember that I have been playing, studying and growing in that small mountain village since I can remember.
It's really a small mountain village. There are seven or eight families living in this ravine. If you look from the outside, who knows there are fireworks inside? Each house is built with its back to the foot of the mountain, and the houses are either closely connected or separated by doors. They are scattered in the ravine, but they are so natural, as if they were scattered by heaven.
People in our village all share the same surname and are uncles and brothers, so they get along naturally and harmoniously. Every morning, we always get up and open the door at the same time, as if we had an appointment with each other. Then the men picked up dung on the path outside the village with dung rakes. The women moved a small stool, sat at their door, bathed in the morning sunshine, combed their hair and pulled each other home. By the time the men came back from collecting dung, the women had cleaned the house, the children were dressed and the food was ready.
During the day, villagers always come out with hoes and work hard in the fields. In this way, the villagers gathered from the entrance of the village in twos and threes until the afterglow of the sunset dyed the western sky red. Even in the slack season, villagers will not be lazy in their lives. No matter whether the flowers bloom or fall, they will still get up early, watch the sunrise in the east and begin to conceive a day's livelihood.
There is a stream in the middle of the village, which is full of spring water seeping from the cracks in the rocks behind the village. They flow out from every crack in the rocks and then gather in the stream. The spring water is clear and sweet. Contained in your mouth, the sweet taste will moisten your stomach along your throat, soothe every inch of your skin, and let you sweep away the fatigue after fatigue. There are even groups of small fish and shrimps in the stream, swimming leisurely between the crystal clear rocks and aquatic plants. When I was a child, I used to chop bamboo under Liu Yin tree to make a fishing rod, which contributed a plate of delicious food to the dining table at home.
The stream flows along the mountain to the village and into an open field. That's the granary in the village. Oh, every family's rice fields are here. Rice fields are divided into pieces by criss-crossing ridges. From spring to autumn, they gave the villagers hope and harvest, and raised several generations in this mountain village.
Unfortunately, that beautiful and simple country has been gradually abandoned by the glitz of modern cities and forgotten by his children and grandchildren. I remember when I went home at the end of last year, there were only less than ten people left in the originally lively village, and they were all elderly people. The way back is better than before. It is no longer a yellow gravel road, but a cement road. However, although the road has kept pace with modernization, few people have taken it. On both sides of the road, those overgrown shrubs grow gratifying. From both sides of the road to the middle of the road, they have to bow their heads when walking on the road.
The three-day symposium passed quickly. I don't remember what I said at the forum, but I deeply remember that the scenery in this ravine resembles my hometown many years ago.