The quietness of Xichuan Why a village like Xichuan must be quiet
The tranquility of Xichuan
A village like Xichuan must be peaceful. In silence, it is gradually growing old.
In fact, Xichuan has aged, with wrinkles on his face, lying quietly in the mountain col, making him even more senile. And because of the decline, the smell of tranquility has become more intense, refreshing my heart.
Xichuan is 27 kilometers away from the county seat and 860 meters above sea level. It is named after a river to the west of the village. According to records, in the first year of Tianshun in the Ming Dynasty, Mr. Zhang visited this place and decided that it was a geomantic treasure, so he bought land, built a house and settled down. Later, the surnames Chen and Wu moved in one after another. The entire village is spread out due to the mountain topography, with well-proportioned and harmonious heights.
I have never seen this kind of private houses made entirely of yellow mud before, layer upon layer, arranged in such a hierarchical manner. The yellow mud wall is thick, with small stones embedded in it. It seems that there are few grass tendons, and the soil has become a standing pillar. The mud wall is still flat, but rough lines have been differentiated on the wall, which makes people imagine the "Wall Beating Song" full of mud smell. Mud walls are gradually erected in this scene. Become buildings with yellow signs. Black tiles and yellow walls are formed row by row, layer by layer, in a free and easy way, which is spectacular. Like prints, the lines are clear and the background is clear; like oil paintings, the colors are rich and the artistic conception is profound. Earthy yellow, a color with a lonely texture, stands out so silently among the mountains, giving people a strong visual shock. Even the broken walls and ruins are tenaciously supported silently, quietly showing the traces of time.
When you look at the entire village from a distance, you will clearly feel that the village environment is so quiet, and the quietness gives off a feeling of remoteness. At the foot of the majestic and dangerous mountains, the land is extremely barren. It is not difficult to imagine the hardship of people in the villages: there is little land, only terraced fields cultivated on the hillside; the water is far away, although there is water from Xichuan, it is far away from the village. Water has to be diverted in; transportation is inconvenient. In the past, there were only five ancient roads leading to the outside of the village. There is only one thing that gives me such a profound feeling, and that is the silence of the village in the mountains.
This village in the mountains, even though it was once home to eight or nine hundred people, with mud houses rising from the ground and wisps of smoke rising high, could not conceal its quiet character after all. . Silence is its inherent quality, performed quietly.
So far, this silence has gradually peeled off, getting deeper and deeper.
There are only forty or fifty people living in the village now, mainly the elderly. These people are either country-loving and unwilling to go out; or they are old and frail and unable to go out; or they have no special skills and no one to rely on when going out. They depend on each other in the earthen house, and they still live in a rhythm of working at sunrise and resting at sundown.
An old man with a brown face and wrinkles was sitting on a bamboo chair at the door with his back bent, looking at us quietly, his eyes were so indifferent. A woman was sitting on a small pavement, knitting a sweater. A little girl of four or five years old stood next to her, with her round eyes open, looking at us blankly or curiously. As we approached, the woman smiled and said, "It's so poor here, and everyone who can get out has gone out." I asked the kid why he was here. The woman sighed and said that she couldn't afford to go to kindergarten, so she let me take her. After walking for a while, I looked back and saw that the woman and child were still on the road, frozen there like a silhouette.
On the other side of the village, an old woman in her late sixties was standing on the flat ground at Gaogangdun. Seeing us approaching, she smiled and asked, "Are you coming to play?" Then he said that there was actually nothing to see, just these old houses. After a pause, he added, you might as well come and play more, that way the village will be more lively; as it becomes more popular, we will be more enriched. That's what she said, but she didn't know if she would feel disappointed when all the tourists went back. It might be a sigh, a kind of helplessness. Amid such sighs and helplessness, the village seemed to become more peaceful.
There is a group of ancient trees beside the village, and below it is a small square of flat land, arranged in rows and rows, as if it were flattened out of a trench. A woman wearing a bamboo hat and light red clothes squatted down, planting some unknown crops.
Below the flat land are slender terraces, which are spread out layer by layer. The green seedlings are thinly reflected in the clear water, giving the terraces a sense of freshness and vitality. It makes people imagine how the early Xichuan people used hoes to cultivate the barren hillsides, and how they planted crops on the terraces built along the mountains. In the harsh and difficult scenes, they planted crops with different scenery in the four seasons. style. But now, many terraces are deserted, and reeds are swaying on the former land. Only the terraced fields in front of me were still on display, indifferent and quiet, which made people amazed for a while.
Xichuan Ancient Road seems to be abandoned, and few people care about it. When the cement road leads to the village, the silence of the ancient road becomes thicker and thicker. This ancient road, which is about five kilometers in total, is made of large and small stones on the mountain. Brown and yellow leaves fall all over the ancient road, rustling, echoing a primitive simplicity, as if it has been in the depths since the fort was built. There are two pavilions built on the ancient road, which are like big trees that provide shade and shelter from the sun and rain. The ancient road passes through the pavilions, giving it a sense of simplicity and nature. Go up a slope and turn a corner, and the quiet charm will follow you along the ancient road.
Like a person who keeps silence alone and is afraid that the silence will be broken and invaded, Xichuan has silently carried the wind and rain for hundreds of years, chewing his own destiny. Fortunately, it is finally known to the world. However, when I looked back at the ancient village of Xichuan, a question suddenly popped up: When Xichuan becomes a scenic spot, will such tranquility still exist? Perhaps, in the dead of night, Xichuan will take a break after heavy breathing and stick to its calm appearance; but, is that still "Xichuan's silence"?