One of the series of inspirational novels “Today’s Wonder Zhou Xinghe” ● A child born in the cellar

“In recent years, many reporters who have come to interview have asked me, what is the most memorable thing in your childhood?” The car was racing on the highway, Zhou Xinghe stopped talking while talking, and fell into a long contemplation. For a long time, he raised his head and said slowly, “The most memorable thing is, perhaps, the dark and damp cellar when I was born, the hayloft that couldn’t stop the wind and rain when I started to remember…”

What Zhou Xinghe said is not wrong.

It was late autumn when I came to Santai County, where I was born and grew up.

Santai, located in the hilly area of ​​northern Sichuan, was originally a land with a long history. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the capital city of the Qi Kingdom was built here. Since then, it has been the governing place of the state, county, and mansion. It was as famous as Chengdu in the Tang and Song Dynasties. This is not only a transportation “land of the throat”, a commodity distribution center, and an economic and cultural center. It is known as the “important town of northern Sichuan and a famous capital of Jiannan”. Poverty and loneliness.

Zhou Xinghe’s hometown is located in a mountain col on the boundary between Santai and Yanting. A rugged mountain trail connects to Maogong Township in Yanting County on the other side of the mountain, and down the mountain is Sanyuan Township in Santai County. There is a small river under the mountain called Weihe. For thousands of years, people on both sides of the Wei River have worked hard and thrived on this land.

On the eighth day of the eighth lunar month in 1953, Zhou Xinghe was born in this barren mountain nest. The year he was born was dry and dry. After the heat, the hot sun was still baking the cracked ground. The midnight when he came to this world, although it was mid-autumn, the house was still sultry and hot.

The place where he was born was indeed in a cellar filled with sweet potato on the hillside.

The cellar in which his family lives is fundamentally different from the cave dwellings inhabited by northerners that are warm in winter and cool in summer. In rural Sichuan, farmers often dig holes in the slope to store things like sweet potato yam. Due to the rainy and lush vegetation in the south, this cellar is humid in summer and cold in winter. When it encounters a thunderstorm, the rain rushes over the entrance of the cave, as if it is about to collapse the cellar; in winter, the whining cold wind penetrates into the cave, as if to freeze people.

In the countryside, only people who are too poor can live in such a place.

“In my childhood memory, the home is really poor. In the humid and sultry cellar, there is only one bed made of bamboo and wood, and the bed is covered with hay. There is only a tattered straw mat on the hay, and there is only one tattered bed on the straw mat. The cotton wool.” Decades later, Zhou Xinghe still remembered the scene clearly, “Outside the dilapidated cellar, there is a thatched shed built with thatch to keep out the wind and rain. Inside the thatched shed, a glance Mud stove, a broken pot, the food cooked in the pot is probably the same as the pig food of the big family, not to mention the food for cats and dogs raised in the city today.”

However, despite the difficult life, the cry of the child born in this ruined cellar still adds a trace of anger and joy to this poor family, especially the father who is old and has a son. .

Zhou Xinghe’s father was Zhou Xianwen, a hard-working man known to his neighbors.

As a rule, when writing a biography, you must at least go back to the protagonist’s eight-generation ancestors. If the ancestor of the person was an official in the court, or a social celebrity, it can be used to prove that the protagonist is from a prominent family. However, whether Zhou Xing and his ancestors were officials or poor family, rich and wealthy or poor and depressed, because his father was bereavement at a young age, his family history has been unclear—but his father still knows a little about his grandfather’s situation of.

When Xinghe was young, he heard his father say that his grandfather was a village doctor. Because of his excellent medical skills, he still had some reputation in the local area. He worked hard for a lifetime and had some savings. When his father was 13 years old, he and his grandfather, who went out to practice medicine, were preparing to go home for the New Year. Unexpectedly, disaster fell from the sky and he encountered bandits in the mountains of northern Sichuan. The bandits not only robbed his grandfather’s money, but also killed his grandfather and porter. Seeing something bad, the young father rolled down the hillside and hid in the thick bushes to escape.

After the death of his grandfather, his father was helpless and became a homeless orphan. In order to survive, regardless of the cold winter and heat, in the morning and evening, the young father carried a broken bowl and a dog stick in his hand, wandering around begging for a living. If you are hungry, you will beg for a red potato or half a bowl of rice soup; if you are sleepy, you will curl up in a ruined temple or get into a haystack. His father was left hungry and cold all his life, and was bullied by all the world’s eyes and rich people-this will undoubtedly leave deep scars in the young Xinghe heart.

Xinghe’s father was a little older, and a rural herbalist saw that he was really pitiful, so he took him in and ended his begging days. After that, his father, apart from carrying the burden for the herbalist, secretly learned a little knowledge of herbal medicine and medicine. In the days that followed, his father relied on the ability of stealing learning to make ends meet.

After the liberation of northern Sichuan in 1950, his father returned to the countryside to get a share of land. In the second year, his livelihood improved a bit. After people said he was in harmony, he formed a family with Xinghe’s mother in this shabby cellar. This year, his father was 51 years old. By the time Xinghe was born, he was 52 years old.

Xinghe’s mother named Hou Shuqing was born in a poor family. Her ex-husband, whose surname was Wang, was an honest peasant who was arrested by the Kuomintang before liberation and died in gunfire. However, he left a pair of children for his wife who was waiting for her husband to return.

The father was uneducated. After the son was born, according to the rules of the country, he asked Mr. Bazi on the court to give his son a fortune. I don’t know if it was the fortune-teller who was slanderous or concealed. He arranged the Xing and the characters, twisted a few sparse beards on his chin, pinched his fingers and calculated carefully, and told his father inexplicably: the year the child was born. It belongs to water, which is “long flowing water”; the day of birth is wood, which is “pomegranate wood”; when the time of birth is Jiazi, it is called “sea gold” in the photo book. It is inferred from this that this person is the pomegranate tree in the long flowing water, and his life has been ups and downs, but the wood drifts in the water, but there is still no danger; since his fate is “the gold of the sea”, he is not afraid of fire and lightning Buried. When this person grows up, he is honest, upright, righteous and kind, but he is bold and stubborn to admit death. Some inferences come down: Although this person has catastrophes in this life, he will also have great blessings.

When the father heard this, he was surprised and delighted. He was both worried about his son’s future and rejoiced for his son’s future.

The son was a little older, and his father asked someone to name him “Xinghe.” As for why he recognized his son’s name, maybe even he himself can’t tell. Probably, since his son’s life has been tragic and fateful, he prayed that his son would not suffer from poverty like himself, so that he would be able to live and prosper in peace!

The birth of Xinghe brought joy and anger to the family, but what made the adults anxious was that there was another mouth to eat.

“After my mother gave birth to me, she later gave me a brother. My father was in his 50s at the time, and my mother was sick all the time. In that difficult situation, it was enough to feed the whole family’s belly. My parents are breaking my heart.” Zhou Xinghe recalled, “I was a small person at the time. Apart from hunger and cold, I often looked up at the black and broken thatched hut in my house. The cold wind blew and the eaves The next few strands of thatch are flying in the wind, the roof is riddled with holes, and the whole shed is shaking in the wind. Children are timid, and I often fear that the shed will be blown away or collapsed by the wind… At that time, I thought naively, when I grow up in the future, I must build a decent house for my family, and also build a house that is not afraid of wind and rain for all the poor in the world!… ”

Of course, this is just a child’s naive fantasy.

The children of poor people in the rural areas have low lives, except that they have no food and clothing; if they are sick, they have no money to take medicines and injections. To put it harshly, it is basically a matter of resignation. As long as the child born does not die from starvation and freezing, and can grow up to adulthood, it can be regarded as extremely pitiful.

However, in the years after Xinghe was born, even though their life was difficult, there was still some soil at home, and they could grow coarse grains and vegetables to feed the family’s belly, and his father could dig some herbs to earn a little money. However, after he was five or six years old, he suffered from major steel and steel, people’s communes, and three years of natural disasters. As a result, the cultural revolution lasted for ten years. The living conditions of their family were even more difficult and even horrible.

It seems that he is doomed in the dark. The Xiaoxinghe who was born in the special place of Pojiao, with his first cry, indicates that he will be accompanied by poverty and suffering, and will depend on hunger and cold. Suffering from the torment and suffering of future life.

“Blessing comes with misfortune, and misfortune lies with blessing.” Perhaps the fate calculated for him by the eight-character on the three yuan field still makes sense!

However, looking at Zhou Xinghe’s lifelong experience, he responded to the words of our ancestor Mencius: “So the heavens will descend to the people of Sri Lanka. their body, the line fu chaos, so tempted Ren Xing, who benefits they can not. “(author: Shu deqi)

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