My hometown is a small mountain village, with rice fields in front and hills behind. There are many tall and miscellaneous trees in Fiona Fang, and no one is allowed to cut them down for generations. This is Houshan, which means a prosperous village where wealth is stored. The paddy fields in front of the village have been connected with the village at the foot of the east mountain. The fields in these two villages crisscross. Men and women brag and tease, smoke and talk, but they are also happy. On the right in front of the village, there are two big fields and a small slope. The bluestone path runs through the village, connects with the ridge and winds at the top of the soil slope.
This small earth slope is not high, but the villagers call it high. I often hear the older generation say: Mr. Feng Shui said that Pogao looks like an official seal, and maybe one day there will be a big official in our village. When I was a kid, I believed it. I have always fantasized that Mr. Feng Shui's words can come true on myself. I didn't study hard, grew up, didn't become an official, and didn't become an official in the village. Looking at the slope again, it feels like an inkstone on a book case. No wonder there were three teachers in Shiliba Village near here in 1950s and 1960s. At that time, there were three literati in a village, which was a great event. When people in the surrounding villages mention it, they always give their thumbs up. Now, several teachers in the village are also teachers. I wonder if it really has something to do with this slope.
The slope is like a lying rectangular inkstone, high in the north and low in the south, reaching the edge of the ridge. There are several ancestral graves in the north and south. I don't know which generation. When they were young, they didn't know they were afraid. They used to pretend to see the stone tablet on the grave. Those inscriptions have experienced wind and rain, and many colors are antiques, and most of them are unrecognizable. Surrounded by farmland, there are also paths up the mountain. The two large grain drying terraces at the top of the slope are divided by each household. Sun rice, corn, soybeans and peanuts in autumn and winter. There are no marks, but every household remembers the boundaries. When drying millet, it won't cross other grain drying plates, and when drying corn beans, it will also remember which one is your own. There are thatch, maple and acacia, and acacia grows the most. An insect named Dysosma likes to lie on the green leaves of Acacia, pretending to be leaves. Mao Mao is poisonous. I remember once picking leaves and accidentally touching them. My fingers were red and swollen immediately and my eyes were spinning with pain. The middle of the slope is full of crisp rice grass, short and soft, dark green. It spreads obliquely from Sunguping to the foot of the slope. The sunshine is warm, and sometimes I fall asleep playing on the slope. I didn't go home drowsily on my mother's back until my mother found it.
In my memory, Pogao is a children's paradise. After breakfast, a village and a dozen children all ran to the top of the slope. Girls jump rope, long rope and short rope, and the rope woven with straw is thick and stupid. They threw it on the ground, snapped and jumped out with many tricks. One person jumps, several people jump, jump back to back, jump face to face, stare at each other, and point your nose at each other. Kicking shuttlecock is also a common way for girls to play. Knock four holes with nails, insert a rooster's tail hair, and you can kick a copper coin into the sky. Think about that time, the roosters in the village were chased all over the village by us, and grandma was provoked to chase us with a broom. Boys play gyro, and the trees in the back hill are the best gyro materials. They secretly cut back a section, cut and planed, circled the belt several times, brushed it to see who won for a long time, turned their noses up happily, lost, and puffed their mouths, looking unconvinced. There are two clear rut marks on the rice crust grass on the slope, which is the children's favorite speeding plank road. Of course, what boys like best is downhill. Hai Ge's father made him a car, wooden boards, four iron wheels and a steering wheel made of wood in front. Sitting in the car, the car slammed down the slope from the top of the slope. If you don't master it well, you will have a mouth to chew on the mud. This wooden cart can make Hai Ge's eyes grow on his head for a whole childhood. As long as he carries it out, there will be no shortage of children with runny noses, and he will not get fried soybeans, popcorn, bean curd cakes and sometimes peanut candy that makes our mouth water.
The small mountain village is quiet and peaceful, with black tile houses, khaki mud brick walls and smoke curling up, far away from the black tile houses. My hunchbacked uncle was leaning against the wall and rolling his pipe. He spit out a cigarette, which made the people next to him cough and said, This cigarette is hard enough. Cleisthenes, the ox, shouted loudly and slowly lined up to cross the slope, which was high and guarded the dawn and dusk of the village.
The autumn wind blows gently, and the fragrant rice overflows. Standing on the high slope, the rice bowed its head heavily, the fields were golden, and every family was busy. The slope became lively and the threshing machine rang noisily. When the laundry basket was full, Xiaomi was sent to threshing ground to dry. Old people can't do heavy work in the field, so they set up windmills at the top of the slope to clean up weeds and sundries mixed in rice. When it was windy, they shook it with a bang, and soon the wind was clean and there was no wind.
Tired, I sat on the slope, watching the rain and sparrows. As for sparrows, they flitted in the air with a sly face, landed on the dried grain flat when people were not paying attention, pecked a few times and were driven by bamboo to fly. Dragonflies come most often. Dragonflies with big eyes are hovering and dancing in the sun. We often chase dragonflies with long brooms, but we can't hit them every time. Sometimes when we see a dragonfly landing on the leaves of a nearby small tree and golden rice, we will secretly catch it, but always touch its tail and it flies away lightly, leaving us stamping our feet in disappointment and regretting it.
Year after year, the old people kept the rain. There are dark clouds and rain, from the mountain pass in the east and the peak in the west. They know what kind of dark clouds and rain can't come down and what kind of dark clouds should be put away quickly. Sometimes rain comes unexpectedly. Originally, it was a beautiful white cloud in Wan Li. Suddenly, the wind suddenly blew, and the dark clouds instantly covered half the sky, and everyone who stayed on the slope rushed over. So the slope is very lively. The men and women in the field threw down their sickles and shoulder poles and ran barefoot to the top of the slope. The old man who rolled the pipe on the wall also hurried to the slope, and the children ran the fastest. Men, women and children who sweep the millet put it away, and the children were not idle, pushing rakes and sweating all over their noses. Put away your home and help the people next to you. So I twisted my wet clothes and left a curse of "this god will die" on Sun Guping. The neighboring villages in the north are low-lying, and the situation on the slope height is their indicator. As long as we see that the slope in our village is busy, we will know that it is going to rain, and we will also rush to collect millet. Sometimes when it rains, we will see that there is no movement in their village, and we will shout to remind them that there is a rainstorm in that village.
Go back to my hometown for the New Year, have a meal and tell my sister-in-law, let's go to Gaopo.
Standing on the high slope, Sunguping, once flat, is full of potholes and weeds. Sister-in-law said: there are fewer people farming now, and Sun Guping is no longer needed. Looking around, there are no rice residues in the field, only dark green citrus trees, rows of tomatoes and golden rape flowers everywhere. The narrow path out of the village has become a wide cement road, and the small building has replaced the mud house with white walls and black tiles, but the village is still so peaceful and quiet.
The wind rustled the thatch, and there were no sparrows and dragonflies on the slope, and there were no groups of children playing. Changed, the slope height has become lonely, but the scene of catching sparrows, dragonflies and harvesting millet has been dancing in the depths of time and melting into blood flowing in my bones. The height of the slope in the depths of my memory has not changed, just like the warmth of my hometown has not changed.
Author: Yongfu Yong 'an Yongfu Primary School in Guilin, Guangxi