Xinzhuang, a place engraved with my nostalgia
Xinzhuang Village, the hometown I am attached to in my dreams, is a place where I can place my homesickness. The life in my hometown has always been imprinted in the depths of my soul. It is located in the corner of Jingshan plateau in the south of Fuping County. It is the plateau at the junction of Sanyuan and Fuping counties. Jingshan Plateau, this loess beam stretches from east to west for more than ninety miles. It comes from the legend of the Yellow Emperor's casting of the tripod. It absorbs the aura of the dawn of China and gives this land a mysterious and legendary color. It is well-proportioned with the emperor's tombs and the tombs guarding the mausoleums. It also confirms the saying that the "golden hanging gourd" is a Feng Shui treasure. These have cast a mysterious veil over the history of the village, which is both secretive and fascinating.
Xinzhuang is located next to the Zhuding Village named after the legend of the Yellow Emperor’s casting of a tripod. Its Huazhuang Formation and Yonghe Village in Sanyuan County are separated by the tomb of Li Yuan, the great ancestor of Tang Xianling Mausoleum. Landscape murals have extremely high artistic value and historical significance. Thanks to the nurturing of Jingshan Plateau's profound humanistic history and the favorable weather, place and people, it has the unique charm of the loess. It stands out among the beautiful rural construction demonstration villages in the county and attracts people from all over the country to visit and observe. "Sweet Xinzhuang, Happy Xinzhuang" has become the village's new business card. Every change in the village has also concerned the hearts of those who are traveling abroad. How many times have they gazed at it affectionately? , she held up the warm and solid arms of Mother Earth, and tightly dragged the wandering hearts of foreigners.
Compared to the title "Xinzhuang Village", I am more accustomed to the name "Xinzhuang Baozi". Although it is a bit more tacky, it has an incomparable sense of intimacy and practicality. This is the hometown where my fathers worked hard, and I have my beloved relatives. I was born and grew up here. Twenty years of my life have left traces here, and the most heartwarming childhood moments are also recalled here one by one. If it weren't for my fate and my stubborn personality, I might have started a family and started a business here like most of my peers, and made a living by staying in my hometown. Because of a piece of notice, I embarked on the long journey south to study. I have longed for the outside world since I was a child. Changing my destiny with knowledge is the best way for a farmer's daughter to go out. I have always been determined that one day I will be able to leave the small village and go to a wider world. Only when I grew up did I realize that I could not go out. It will always be my hometown. Thousands of miles away, I still remember my hometown the most!
Thinking back to what my hometown looked like at that time and my carefree childhood, the old memories become clearer and brighter. Suddenly, I seemed to see the little girl with pigtails and singing nursery rhymes walking through the fields, holding a bunch of dandelions and foxtail grass picked by herself, or carrying a bamboo basket to collect oil, spoons, vegetables, and purslane. Amaranth and other country delicacies, because she likes the way dandelions flutter, likes various small animals woven with foxtail grass, and likes to be close to nature in the fields with her family. She recalls the way her grandfather and she waved the big and small shovels up and down when digging wild vegetables. The detailed description of "Grandpa and I's Garden" in "The Story of Hulan River". This kind of childhood life is simple and unforgettable. Some memories are separated by a long time. Once the emotional factor is injected into it, there is a reason to remember it. These are all related to the village. My gradually distant village keeps looking for its past appearance in my memory to connect the fragments of time.
Other villages on the Jingshan Plateau all have certain historical allusions or geographical distribution, such as Zhuding Village, which has a legend of making a tripod, or the East Canal and the West Canal, which are divided due to the presence of wolves, or Unique terrain names such as Poli, Heli, and Wali are named. The name of Xinzhuang Village seems a bit strange and innovative. The so-called new word, I heard from my great-grandfather, is that most of Xinzhuang Villages are immigrants. There is no way to verify whether the newly formed villages are accurate or not. There is no village chronicle inquiry, and it is unknown. There are reliable written records. I tried to find it in the family tree, but it had been lost long ago. I could only find a clue from the sporadic memories of my great-grandfather. Because of the new construction, the overall planning and construction of the village has shown a neat and unified distribution. The laneways and houses are symmetrical. The main roads of east, west, north and south are symmetrical and interconnected in four directions. Agricultural fields are distributed on the periphery of the village, surrounding the village and crisscrossing the middle. It is also in line with the traditional ancient architectural philosophy of "Zhonghe and Datong" in northern China. Houses, fields, and cooking smoke are the hometown scenery, intertwined with the picture of the countryside, which reminds me of Tao Yuanming's "Returning to the Garden and Living in the Fields" "The back eaves are shaded by elms and willows, and the peach and plum trees are in front of the hall. The distant village is warm, and the smoke in the ruins" Relaxed and peaceful.
The bright moon in my hometown always casts its afterglow to the southern country in thousands of nights. The white clouds in my hometown always come misty on windy days. The stories of my hometown always burst out with vivid characters at the tip of my pen and ripples in my heart.
Because of attachment, so love. Walking through the village lanes and traveling through time, the curtain of time slowly unfolds here. In the early morning, one meter of sunshine passes through the forest, and the mist is misty. The village moves the pace of time as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Standing on the bank of the plateau and looking to the north, the Beishan Mountain in the distance is looming in the clouds. In the countryside at that time, the day's work began with the sound of cocks crowing and dogs barking.
Whenever it comes to early spring in February, the beginning of the year, after experiencing the bustle of the Spring Festival, everything revives, and the natural world is also ready to move with the abundant spring. The wheat seedlings in early spring have just poked their heads out to suck the milk of the earth. , it is not yet the busy farming season, so the villagers go out to work and do odd jobs to supplement their living expenses. In May and June, the wind blows in the fields, and the hot wheat waves roll with the midsummer. Wheat yellow is the most brilliant color in my hometown. I still remember the wheat harvest season in my childhood. In the era before mechanization, in the hot summer, my family waved their hands. The sickle was cutting the wheat, and the sweat that had been shaken into eight petals ran across the skirt of my clothes. At that time, I was placed under the big tung tree on the edge of the field to enjoy the cool air. I took care of the bundles of wheat and watched the ant colony complete a grand banquet. , many years later, this scene has been lingering in my mind. The memory of five or six years old is so clear, maybe it comes from the feelings of hometown. The climate of the Loess Plateau is arid, and crops on the Guanzhong Road are generally harvested twice a year. In autumn, golden corn makes a grand appearance. The heavy corn cobs are like golden microphones, conveying the sound of harvest on the plateau. In those years, production conditions were backward, and farmers always Corn cob leaves are interlaced and bundled for long-term storage. In winter, when the wheat seedlings are sleeping soundly, if there is a falling snow, it is the greatest gift of nature. You can enjoy the blessings of auspicious snow "with a three-layer wheat quilt in winter and a steamed bun as your pillow in the coming year." When there is a break in farming, the whole family sits around to work on the corn cobs they stocked up in the fall, peeling them into kernels in exchange for income, and waiting for the coming of the New Year. The four seasons change roles throughout the year, enriching life. What remains unchanged is the exploration of life and the desire for a new era. Rural life is quiet, peaceful and full of hope.
Our neighbors have all come from hard times and experienced a miserable life of not having enough to eat, which has created our rural style of thrift, hard work and simplicity. If you are poor, change will lead to success, and life will get better day by day. Land is the foundation for our survival, and all our hopes rest on the land. My family is changing the face of poverty with their hard-working hands and courage to innovate. Water is the source of life, and it is particularly important for crop harvests in dry plateau areas. There are no wells in our village, but there are wells in the neighboring village. There is a shortage of water everywhere. Naturally, people from other villages are left behind and watch their crops wither. The next year, grandpa officially started the well-drilling plan, and construction of two wells, one in the south and one in the north, was started at the same time.
The machine was spinning day and night, and the rumbling sound was loud. Many people in the village went to help with the work, hoping that water would come out of the wells. These two wells carried the hopes of the northwest team of the whole village. The machine goes deeper into the ground day by day, and what is pumped up is still continuous yellow sand. Without water for a day, my heart is always hanging. This is the well digging fee raised from the family's belongings and borrowing money from everywhere. Although the optimal geographical location has been investigated before, it is still quite difficult to get out of the water in the Loess Platform area. After digging for more than ten meters underground, a gurgling clear spring finally flowed out. After the pipe was officially installed, it took on the mission of the well and raised a family. It was a big happy event to be promoted to the new management. On that day, a banquet was held at home to celebrate the promising day together. Today, more than ten years have passed, and the two wells are still bursting with tenacious vitality, waiting for crops one after another. Today, as the land is being transferred, they are also nurturing the growth of garden seedlings. In the days when there was a well, my family planted various crops. For convenience, we purchased agricultural machinery, and the whole family invested in the land.
Many years have passed, and the village in the eyes of a child has continued to grow and change quietly in the tide of the times. The village has a new look, with new buildings rising from the ground and newly built cement roads leading to all directions. The village planning has gradually been unified, showing the society what the new countryside looks like. Since policies to benefit the people have spread to thousands of households, targeted poverty alleviation has been implemented in place, villages have implemented land transfers, and collectivization has developed the garden economy according to local conditions. Villagers do not have to be burdened with heavy farm work, and going to work in the gardens has become a new way of life.
Material abundance will inevitably lead to spiritual and cultural improvement, and also respond to the times’ beautiful needs for a new countryside with improved life, livable ecology, elegant environment, and civilized rural customs.
The village has built new facilities such as a farmhouse library, cultural wall, and leisure square. Each vivid cultural wall is painted with patterns of the twenty-four filial piety and other traditional Chinese virtues. The etiquette of filial piety and brotherhood has also been passed down one by one in the village. In summer evenings, people have changed from enjoying the cool in the fields to having fun in the square. The peasant women who usually circle around the pots twist their waists and dance in the square. In the elderly dance team, the average age of the grandmothers is nearly 70 years old. , and also performed on stage and traveled abroad, which were unimaginable before, and they are all filled with their love for life. Children were playing with exercise equipment, something I had never seen in my childhood. The village committee was newly built on the site of Xinzhuang Primary School. Unfortunately, my enlightenment school was lost in the glorious history. My great-grandfather once worked here. Nurturing peaches and plums, there are many farm students from here who are university professors, party and government pioneers, military elites and industry leaders. The primary school is gone, and I am happy to rebuild the farmhouse, a sacred place of culture. Many of my magazines and anthologies were donated to the bookhouse, which can be regarded as a literature lover’s hope for the culture of my hometown.
Rural culture is my roots. Nostalgia will always linger in time. My hometown is a tear in the corner of my eyes, sliding gently down my face and onto the paper. My fathers measured it with their muddy feet. Looking at the distance between the fields, I wrote the hymn of the countryside with my thoughts full of nostalgia. Looking back, my hometown will always be there watching me, missing you, the hometown where my soul nestles!