Father and His Thatched Cottage Prose
The thatched cottage is a place where humans have relied on to shelter from wind and rain for thousands of years. It is an ancient architectural form of human residence. This kind of ground-level architecture on the plateau continued in my simple memory until the 1990s.
At that time, as long as there were one or two thatched cottages and a fence, no matter how big or small, high or short, people had a sense of belonging and identity even if they had a home. This kind of special building is almost impossible to see in urban areas, but it is very common in rural areas and more in mountainous areas. Moreover, thatched houses in dam areas are generally relatively tall and spacious; in mountainous areas, they are very low and narrow. Ours is a dam area with many mountains and forests, mostly green pine trees. The thatched houses are naturally built with pine branches and pine leaves from the mountains. In alpine mountainous areas with slightly higher altitudes or riverside valley areas, there are no woods and thatch is spread all over the mountains and plains. It is a good material for building thatched houses, and many farmers use straw and straw to cover it, which is equally practical, beautiful and comfortable.
This kind of thatched cottage looks extremely simple and has an uncomplicated structure. The bottom is a rectangle, the top is a herringbone, and the length and width dimensions are an auspicious number. The footings are stones and stone strips, the walls are earth walls, and the partitions are also earth walls. When the earth is raised up, it becomes a house; when it is pushed down, it becomes earth. The beams are made of pine, the floor is made of bamboo, and the roof is made of thatch. Drawn from nature, return to nature. Rural people usually choose a yang Feng Shui land, choose an auspicious day before starting construction, build the foundation, and then build the wall. One method is to dig the soil directly on the spot manually, put up wall panels, and tamp the soil with a wall pestle; the other method is to use mud and build the prepared soil dustpans one by one into walls. Building the wall is not completed in one go. More than a dozen pieces of wood must be installed halfway through the wall. As the first floor, you need to wait a few days until the foundation is basically dry before you can continue the construction. After the wall is repaired, carpenters are asked to install the beams and cross beams. After the beams are installed, they must be hung in red and a few firecrackers lit to show prosperity, peace, happiness, and good fortune. The last step is to use pine wood to set up rafters and cover it with grass. Basically, it’s done. But in those days, it was not easy to build such a simple thatched house. A house only costs more than 100 yuan or more than 200 yuan, but our monthly salary is only dozens of yuan. A farmer can only earn a few cents a day, and many families need to save several years to build a thatched house. My parents lived frugally, leaving early and returning late. They didn't even take a break on New Year's Eve. They worked hard and saved for several years before building a thatched house. With an area of more than forty square meters, a family of five people, including grain, pigs, and cattle, were all squeezed into this small space. This mixed space of humans and animals has always remained in my memory.
My father’s thatched cottage faces south. Like other thatched cottages in the village, dozens of families gather together in thatched cottages. They all have the same gray and white color and herringbone structure, dotted among ancient trees, creating a mysterious and special atmosphere against the blue sky. When you walk into this home, you will see a stinking cattle pen on the left, a firepit and tableware on the right, and the floor where grain is stored at the top. Behind the partition wall in the middle of the room are beds and wardrobes, where the family lives poetically. "The farmer puts the hoe and plow, and the grass grows in the long acres." He pulls the cart, plows the fields and harrows the ground. Raising cattle is like raising a son. Cows are the lifeblood of a father's livelihood. Fortunately, within a few years, my parents built a low thatched house to the west of the thatched house for the cattle.
When I was a teenager, I was studying in the city and visited several classmates’ homes in the mountains. So, another cliché discovery was made: urban houses are not big, but they are basically tile-roofed houses and stone roads; the more dam areas and mountainous areas are, they are all thatched houses and ash roads. After moving the livestock out, I tried my best to make the inside and outside of the house beautiful and clean. I planted several landscape trees in front of and behind the house to give myself a comfortable and tidy living environment. When my relatives and friends came, they would naturally praise me. With a few words, your self-esteem will be so swollen that it can’t even fit in your cabin.
Perhaps it was because of the abundant and even rainfall in those years, or perhaps because the economic situation had improved. In the village, dozens of thatched houses are growing like a large field of mushrooms, and some have even turned into tile houses and red brick houses. In front of the village, a large rice field is filled with water almost all year round. Gray roofs look out over the large rice fields in the distance.
My father planted dozens of kinds of trees in front of and behind the house, including persimmons, walnuts, jujubes, saponins, peppers, peach trees, jujube trees, apricot trees, etc., as well as many bamboo forests, weeping willows, locust trees and other landscape trees. Various medicinal materials, flowers and plants. If you are hungry, you can pick a few fruits to satisfy your hunger; if you can’t afford soap, you can use a few saponins to do laundry; if you have a cold or an injury to your hands or feet, you can pick a few medicinal plants to solve the problem. Dig a pond in front of your door. If there are no fry, just catch a few small fish in the field and put them in the pond. They can grow to more than half a catty in a year. When guests come, add one or two fish to the pot, which is convenient and fresh. If you plant a piece of mushroom, you won’t have to worry about running out of vegetables in winter.
In an era when material conditions were extremely difficult, the happiness index of our village was very high. There are dozens of families in a village, and there is a certain amount of space for each other. They are all thatched houses, with the occasional tile-roofed house, all with thick walls, but the flow of information will not stop just because of a wall. Which family bought a bicycle or a black and white TV, which family's children got married, which family's old man died, the whole village knew within a few minutes. In the evening, the men, women, and children in the village have a good meal, and they are either joking under the big tree, singing folk songs under the moonlight, or gathering in front of the TV at home.
The difference is in the city. The houses in the city are basically tile-roofed houses. They are one street and one after another. In fact, there is only one wall between households. The wall is made of wood and is very thin. This wall is the direct medium for information dissemination. When I was a child, I studied in the city and lived under the oil lamp in my family's thatched house under the electric light of my uncle's house. Next door were two other families, one upstairs and another downstairs. I often hear things hitting the wall, the texture of the sound is different, sometimes it's a chair, a clothes hanger, a book, sometimes it's a whole human body. Therefore, living in this bright-looking urban community, it feels like the entire public space has been squeezed desperately, and in the end there is only a narrow corridor, a kitchen, and a toilet.
The wooden board walls in the city are too thin, unlike the earthen walls in the countryside, which are thick and have a certain amount of space between the walls. All the secrets of the neighbors can be shared with everyone. Just like taking a bus or a train sleeper, using a random selection method to push people with different lifestyles, different habits, different personalities, and complete strangers into a small space, allowing them to put their best self after the glamor of the day has faded. The decadent, tired, and unsophisticated sides are exposed to each other. When my uncle drinks, he treats me as an educational target, and he is much better than a teacher. As soon as he opened his high-octave voice, he would scold him for an hour or two. The neighbors would not be at peace and would come over to scold his uncle at any time. One night, around eleven o'clock, I heard a girl from my neighbor crying seriously. She was a very elegant and beautiful girl. That cry was full of indescribable sadness and grievance, and was accompanied by the sound of cooking. She might have to work the night shift, so even though the sky was about to fall, she still had to eat dinner, and she was not allowed to work the night shift. Not on. All the movements belonging to the assembly line of this city cannot stop at midnight. Perhaps, it is easy to encounter thousands of sorrows in this city, but it is often not suitable to talk about them in detail with others.
In the 1990s, there were more tile-roofed houses in the village. My father’s new tile-roofed house had been completed. The family’s thatched cottage seemed to be about to collapse in a lonely autumn, like a piece of land about to wither in the wind. fallen leaves. The autumn rain is continuous, and the roof is leaking. The wardrobe, altar table, and dining table are always filled with pots and jars, and the overflowing rainwater needs to be poured out at any time. My mother, who had been frugal all her life and could eat leftovers for several days, unfortunately suffered from liver cancer. She lay in bed for several months, looking at the dark roof and raindrops, with blood and pus constantly coming out of her chest. A pair of empty eyes often look through the window at the harvest fields. My mother passed away quietly on a golden autumn day. The family was devastated, never expecting that my mother would suffer from cancer. For more than a year, my mother almost lived in hospitals, both in the city and in the province, and the doctors didn't even dare to do the procedures. I gave her all the anti-cancer and analgesic drugs I could find on the Internet and recommended by friends, and bought her some things she liked to eat, hoping to have a certain effect, but her condition worsened day by day, and no one could Nothing can be done.
On the border between Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, a patch of withered weeds, a pile of loess, and a tombstone make up the scenery of my mother's cemetery, just like her indifferent and plain life. The sad thing is that until my mother passed away, I never and dared not tell her what the real disease was that was eating her away. What's even more uncomfortable is that my mother didn't feel the historical process of urbanization. She never lived in a high-rise building, didn't even enjoy a decent house for a day, and quietly left this beautiful world without even seeing her great-granddaughter. .
After my mother passed away, we built another reinforced concrete bungalow on the same site. We also built a bungalow in the market town, and the family moved to the market town. I hope that my father, who has worked hard all his life, can enjoy the blessings of the new era in his remaining old age. Unfortunately, this is just our wishful thinking. My father, who is over eighty years old, insists on living in his hometown no matter what. He is always reluctant to leave his hometown. Family and friends tried to persuade him several times to no avail. When he talked too much, tears filled his eyes. I have to visit my hometown frequently and buy food, clothes, pots and pans and other daily necessities at any time. However, my hometown is in a mess. There are all kinds of discarded cartons, paper bags, and plastic bags everywhere in the house. I never bother to open the peanut high-calcium drink, Zhaotong mung bean cake, and cakes sent by my relatives and friends, and most of them have expired. A puppy is accompanied by his father. There are many old household items in the house, mother's relics, such as sweatshirts, shoes, torn cotton clothes with holes, etc., each of which seems to be of no use, but every one of them is valuable to the father. I still can’t bear to throw it away, and I don’t allow others to throw it away. To my father, every grain, every inch of cloth, a piece of tile, and a needle were extremely precious.
The years are silent, there is no thatched house that is warm in winter and cool in summer, and there is no mother. There is less elegance and warmth, more helplessness and sadness, more sadness and speechlessness. The low thatched house and the figure of my mother have become the past that I will always recall.