2020-08-09
During the Vietnam War in 1979, my grandparents took me to live in Napo Town, Tianyang County. Jingxi, next to Napo Town, is the front line. According to adults, the sound of cannons can be heard at night. The second aunt Chen Xiuhua married a driver named Huang Mingheng at the Jingxi Bus Terminal. After the war, the second aunt took her cousin Huang Yongcan and cousin Huang Yao'e to evacuate and stay with their grandparents. I was probably learning to speak at that time, and when I heard my cousin grandpa call me grandpa, I also called grandpa grandpa, and I continued to call him grandpa for decades. In fact, everyone calls grandpa by different names. Grandma calls grandpa the old man (loubougie in Cantonese), and his eldest aunt, second aunt, and neighbors call him third uncle. Later I found out that we still have a lot of relatives in Baise. My grandfather’s father came from Luoding, Guangdong. He did business along the Pearl River from the outlet to the source. Then he settled in Baise and ran a mountain goods department store business. He once sold Tiger, runs a shop called "Chen Yiji". The name should come from the "Yimen Chen Family" in the Northern Song Dynasty. Despite the name, I don’t know whether it was during the War of Liberation or the Baise Uprising. Chen Taigong wanted to make some ill-gotten wealth, so he used his own shop as a guarantee to borrow money from shop owners on the entire street, and got a huge sum of money. He hired a team of tax policemen and went to Yunnan to sell two loads of opium cigarettes. Such a grand operation really alarmed Li Huangbai's government. The tax police team was surrounded by a company of regular troops and disarmed on the spot. Two loads of opium cigarettes were confiscated. Grand Duke Chen Yiji returned to Baise alone. When the shops on the street heard the bad news, they closed "Chen Yiji" that day.
The grandpa had three sons and two daughters. The eldest uncle was the principal in the Li Huangbai government, and Tianyang Middle School was founded by him. The second uncle was called Erbonong and had always lived in Baise. The grandfather ranked third, so Called Uncle San. There is also an eldest aunt who is the second eldest. She married and went to Nanjing before the liberation, and there was no news after the liberation. And the youngest sister, married in Nanning, was called Qiu Gu by my father. During the most difficult time for the family, my father was admitted to high school and was not prepared to go to school. When Aunt Qiu found out, she rushed back from Nanning and gave my father 10 yuan, saying that there was only one boy in the family and no one in the whole street had passed the exam. How could he still not study after he passed the exam? So my dad became a rare high school student at that time. During the three-year period of natural disasters, my father and his three younger sisters went up trees and down rivers every day, hunting for birds and fishing, living half-starved and half-fed.
After the family fell into decline, the family fell apart and Baise could not stay any longer. Taigong went to Nanning and bought a small house on Water Street by the Yong River to continue doing business. Grandpa stayed in Napo to purchase goods and passed here. lifetime.
When the Vietnam War was raging, my grandma worked as a porter at the dock, and my grandpa worked in the town canteen for a living. I had nothing to do every day. I mainly ran to the Youjiang River Bridge with my friends and watched the cars pulling cannons to Jingxi. We formed a team every few days, and we couldn't finish it from beginning to end. Later, the dock warehouse was converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers. Many wounded soldiers were transported. White bandages were put on racks and hung all over the street. The children were curious and ran to watch the fun. As time went by, the smell of medicine became more and more obvious. The more I rushed, the smell became unpleasant, so I had to take a detour.
My grandma’s surname is Wang, and her name is Wang Ruyun. She is taller than my grandpa. In my memory, grandma was more powerful than grandpa, and she often called grandpa around in the house. I heard from my mother that she used to be a lady, and she once went to collect rent during floods. Now she works as a dock worker, carrying more than 100 kilograms back and forth from the river to the warehouse every day. It is understandable that she has a bad temper. My grandma is very kind to me. As long as she is not going to work, she will carry me around the house. One time I went to someone's house. She went to the back room to talk to the adults and left me in the main room. In the main room, a child was sitting at a small table, lowering his head to suck on a bowl of porridge on the table. He ignored me when I was next to him. According to the teachings at home, one must hold a bowl when eating. This may be the first time I saw another child in someone else's home, so I watched him sucking the bowl of porridge with great curiosity. At this time, grandma came out after finishing her errands, grabbed me and started to leave. I felt strange and pointed at the child and asked why he ate like that. Grandma threatened that those were monkeys on the mountain. If I ate like that, I would turn into a monkey and be driven back to the mountain. After saying that, he took me away. This was the first metaphor I heard, and I believed it to be true, so it left a deep impression on me. I thought of how monkeys were often whipped when watching monkey shows, and I shuddered in my heart. From then on, I paid great attention to the way I eat.
As the war continued, adults often talked about it in the streets. They said that the Tianyang Militia Battalion also sent 800 people there. They met Vietnamese agents whose accent was exactly the same as Tianyang Zhuang’s, so they were shelled first. He suffered heavy casualties, and was later assassinated by agents, killing another group of people. The superiors became anxious and isolated the militia camp and questioned them one by one. If they could not tell the name of the brigade, village, or companions, they would be shot on the spot. Only half of us came back, and one of our relatives also died. When talking about this, my grandparents felt sad.
My grandfather once attended the third grade of elementary school. He could write and do math. He was quite conceited among the neighbors and often idled around. Once, an old man from another family was preparing a medicine and needed a boy to urinate, so he came to see my grandfather. , Grandpa was actually happy to see the result, picked me up and let me pee into the bowl in his hand. Although I wear crotchless pants, I have been taught by words and deeds how to do such a disrespectful thing as urinating in public, so I firmly refused. From now on the neighbors should know that I will not turn into a monkey.
The most lively place on the street is the cinema. A few of us friends often sneak in to watch movies. We don’t speak Mandarin and can’t understand half of the movies. We just watch them for fun. I remember one of them is a cultural revolution fighting movie. , a person pretending to be a painter went to paint a building of another faction, and was discovered by a female militiaman of the hostile faction, so the painter gave the painting to the female militiaman, who let him go. Later, both of them died. The other piece is "Be Proud, Mom". I beat it very hard, but I only remember that song. There was also a piece of painted skin. I was so frightened that I couldn’t even remember it. Grandpa was very interested. He couldn't get in, so he went to buy movie tickets. As a result, while queuing, his butt pocket was opened by a thief and all the money was stolen. Grandpa went home dejected and was scolded by grandma all night.
Not long after, grandpa’s fortune changed and he was hired by the Tianyang County Supply and Marketing Cooperative as the director of the Tianyang County Fertilizer Warehouse. He took up the post immediately. The family moved away from that slope and lived in a warehouse on the other side of the Youjiang River. The fertilizer warehouse was behind the middle school and next to Pingping. Park Village.
Grandpa received this special treatment, according to my aunt, because the county once arranged to dispose of the property of a landlord. Since grandpa had worked as a tailor, he was arranged to help three cotton quilters unwrap quilts. As a result, a brocade bag was found in the quilt, which contained three gems and two gold rings. The Cotton Guys each got a gem, and Grandpa got two rings. At dawn, Cotton Man finished his work and the gems were missing. Grandpa chose to hand over two gold rings. At this point, Xu was officially recognized that his grandfather was valuable and that he had a talent for making money, so he became a civil servant. Grandma came over and fed the 40 pigs from the supply and marketing cooperative on the spot.
My aunt is my grandfather’s eldest daughter, her name is Chen Xiuling. She and her uncle Liao Yimin just got married, and she works as a car driver at Tianyang Silk Mill. My uncle Liao Yimin is unemployed and works as a gangster on the street. At that time, my aunt suffered a miscarriage while pregnant with her first child and lived in a small dormitory in the middle school to recuperate. Occasionally, he would come to the warehouse to visit us and have a meal. If he accidentally mentioned this, he would get angry, beat his chest and feet, and scold the third uncle for being crazy again. Only then did I find out that my grandpa once had a sexual disorder, which was why he was idle before. Now it seems that grandpa is really crazy, otherwise he would have been able to take care of his first son and three daughters in such a difficult time.
In short, living in a fertilizer warehouse is my paradise. It is adjacent to Youjiang River and is surrounded by four rows of large tile-roofed houses to form a giant courtyard. The row next to the gate is the staff dormitory and the cowshed. The row on the left is nitrogen fertilizer, the row on the right is probably phosphate and potassium fertilizer, and the row behind is the pig pen. There is another room dedicated to pesticides, called 66 Powder, which is very smelly. I never go there. There are dozens of black bean tanks in the middle area, taller than me. and mountains of firewood. I once climbed up to play, but it was easy to get my feet pinched, so I gave up.
The fertilizer warehouse is an extremely busy place every day. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a lot of traffic, more cars than on Napo Street. I have seen tractors such as Jiefang tractors, large tractors, medium-sized tractors, and manual tractors. There were tractors, oxcarts and horse-drawn carriages, and there were long lines waiting to be loaded with goods. Grandpa first has to go to the warehouse to count, walking through the flow of people and cars; then he returns to his residence to do the counting, and makes the abacus crackle. After get off work, he would carry me on his back and patrol along the warehouse for a week, with my grandma accompanying me to feed me. I think that when Chen Yiji was very prosperous, it was just like this. It was the so-called self-satisfaction.
Grandpa is a person with a very good temper, and he will retaliate even if he is scolded by his aunt. He never curses, but if forced, he will yell "No", and that's the bottom line. I once saw people collecting wine bottles along the street in Napo. I knew that glass could be sold for money. I saw a lot of waste light bulbs removed from various fertilizer warehouses, so I carefully collected a basket and begged my grandfather to take it to the waste collection place of the supply and marketing cooperative to sell it. ——It’s good to buy candies and eat them. Maybe it was because he saw that I wanted to make money while working for the first time, and my attitude was very exciting. After he said "no", I still hugged my thighs and rolled around, etc. He actually took the time to hold my hand and carry the basket with me. Went to the headquarters of the supply and marketing cooperative. There he greeted every acquaintance he met. When people asked him what he was doing here, he said he was here to sell scrap light bulbs. And everyone said they couldn't sell it, yes, everyone. He just laughed and didn't take it seriously. Let me stand by and hear them all.
So I felt very sad, and I should have been silent the whole time walking back from the street to the warehouse. Just like this, I returned to the warehouse door with a basket of waste light bulbs. I was too embarrassed to go in because my grandma also said that if I couldn't sell it, I would be laughed at if I went back.
While dawdling, grandpa said throw it away. He led me to the back of the warehouse, and I suddenly remembered that there was an ammonia tower there with a cement floor. If a light bulb was thrown on the cement floor, it would explode like a firecracker. So my grandfather and grandson went there happily, and I threw all the light bulbs down from the ammonia tower. They shattered on the ground with a "bang bang bang", and my mood improved.
From now on, as long as grandpa says "no", it means no, otherwise he will be humiliated.
But he was too young, so he could not help but humiliate himself. In the end, the most Grandpa could say was "waste".
The reason why my grandfather is like a god in my mind is that one evening, my grandma was feeding pigs in the pigsty. I was watching the pigs next to me, and I saw my grandpa walking over in a hurry, saying that the weather was There is weirdness. When I looked up at the sky, I saw that it was a gray-red color. Grandpa asked grandma to feed him one ladle at a time and not to be too hasty. After a while, grandpa yelled "go" and ran home with me on his back, grandma also running behind. As soon as we reached the door, hailstones as big as eggs fell.
The hail fell for a long time. We didn't light lamps, make fires, or eat. We all sat under the beams. Grandpa hugged me tightly. The three of us looked up and stared at the roof. The wind roared outside and the tiles crackled. .
Fortunately, the house did not collapse, so it was a false alarm. The next day, my grandfather took me to the supply and marketing cooperative to inquire about the situation. I heard that several rooms had been demolished, so I went to watch the excitement. I saw a large pile of ice in the backyard of the supply and marketing cooperative. It was as big as two or three retaining wall stones. If he had run slower back from the pig pen, the consequences would have been disastrous. So I was in awe. Although grandpa had a good temper, every word he said should be correct and powerful.
From then on, I was very polite to people with a good temper, and I continued to be so until I grew up. I also developed a good temper myself, because it is very obvious that a slight change in the temper of such a person means that something is wrong. occur.
Grandma is not this kind of person. I can often see her speaking eloquently. As small as eating, sitting, and standing, as big as going out to meet guests, I was scolded by her often.
With one exception. My grandparents were very busy at that time, so I often sneaked out of the warehouse to play, and I got to know many rural children. They sometimes went to swim in the Youjiang River. One time I followed them, and while playing, I walked into the river. Only my head was exposed, and as they said later, with divine help, I didn't go further into the river. I don’t know how long it took, but a group of people ran over from the warehouse. Grandpa was the first one. Without saying a word, he rushed into the water with his clothes on and picked me up. After that, the two of them were silent all night, looking strange, and the room was very quiet. I knew I had done something big wrong again, but grandma rarely got angry at me.
Of course, this was only temporary. Later, she and I took a bullock cart to the other side to fetch a mountain spring. We were mischievous along the way and even muddied the water. So she beat her with a bamboo branch and I was beaten several times. I had a red seal and cried all the way home before giving up.
The only time I was taught a lesson by my grandfather was when I secretly took money from home and ran to the street to buy sour radishes to eat. By coincidence, I happened to meet my grandfather coming out of the supply and marketing cooperative, and he was punished. He hit the top of his head with his knuckles. The heart-wrenching pain is still remembered to this day and he can't even cry. When he got home, in addition to being called "waste", he was also called "defeat". He is now eating on the street. Something, there is still a shadow in my heart.
When my aunt lived in the middle school, sometimes I would go to his place to play. I know that like my grandma, she is also a loud talker, but she is very kind to me. I ate malted milk from her once, which was extremely delicious, much better than maltose. From the warehouse to the middle school, you have to pass through a brick kiln, then three tall kapok trees, and then a mango grove. Behind the forest is the middle school wall. When you walk into the back door, you will find a sweet potato field, and you can go to the aunt's house. Once when I was passing through a sweet potato field, I saw a big red snake crawling slowly in front of me. I had to stand and wait. Maybe I was scared out of my mind, or maybe I heard adults say that if you see a snake that doesn't move, it won't bite. People's words. After waiting for a long time for the snake to finish crawling, and waiting for another half day to make sure that the snake would not crawl back, I dared to move forward. Anyway, I seldom went to middle school afterwards, but unfortunately I only had malted milk once. However, my aunt often comes to visit us. She will take a bucket and a kitchen knife during her lunch break, go into the sugar cane field, chop back a bucket of sugar cane, peel off the sugar cane skin in a very high-end way, and then give it to everyone to eat. I haven't fully mastered this knife skill yet. I usually just run into the sugar cane fields and come out when I'm full.
From conversations with adults, I learned that my parents, who work in distant Yishan, could not come to Tianyang to see me for various unclear reasons. Therefore, I often see my eldest aunt and my second aunt. The second aunt has the same temperament as her grandfather, and she is also a very gentle person. When she works in the Jingxi Quilt Factory, she often quarrels with her eldest aunt, but she has never seen her as excited as her eldest aunt. When the eldest aunt gets excited, she beats her chest and dances with joy. The aunt lowered her eyebrows, looked at her with squinting eyes, and said, "Hey, why are you like this?" During the war, the second aunt often took his two children to the warehouse for refuge. The older one was named Huang Yongcan. , one year older than me, the younger one is called Huang Yao'e, one year younger than me, and both of them are gentler than me. We jumped up and down together and had a lot of fun in the warehouse. Activities included taking the dog out to catch voles, climbing ladders and digging Bird eggs, nitrogen fertilizer bags as high as climbing mountains, feeding cows, pigs and turkeys. The second aunt calls Huang Yongcan brother and Huang Yao'e Amei. Before they arrived, I never understood why I was called Brother Yishan. Only then did we all use unified names. I called my second aunt’s children Jingxi Brother and Jingxi Sister, and I was called Yishan Brother, and I have been called them like this for the rest of my life.