At that time, every household made many such things. Round and white bamboo strips were placed in rows and rows on the ground and shelves in the front yard, vying to bask in the warm winter sun. It wa

At that time, every household made many such things. Round and white bamboo strips were placed in rows and rows on the ground and shelves in the front yard, vying to bask in the warm winter sun. It was a scene like this. It looks quite spectacular, and I always know that the Chinese New Year is coming soon. From the sunken vestibule to the main hall, you have to climb three or four steps. When the house was first built, the main hall was supposed to be a place where large tables and chairs were placed for family ceremonies and to receive distinguished guests. When we arrived at my home, the hall was the space mostly used by my family and several neighbors including my uncle from across the door. It was also the space where a group of us children played most often. There is a wall in front of the square hall, and a long altar table is placed against the wall. There is a door more than one meter wide on each side of the wall. Across the threshold is the back hall. The back hall faces north and is relatively dark. It is usually empty and used to hold spirits when necessary. My family and my cousin's family live in the wing rooms on the east and west sides of the hall respectively. The doors of the houses all face the main hall. At that time, every family burned firewood and coal stoves. My family piled the firewood and briquettes in the hall against the wall of our house, using the threshold as the boundary, and stacked them as far back as possible on the wall as close to the threshold as possible. When there is a death, the coffin is parked in the back hall, and the front hall is decorated like a mourning hall. It stays there for seven days. During the day, people play and play, but at night, no one is guarding it. It is so eerie and scary. What I was most afraid of was that my mother asked me to fetch some firewood to light the fire while she was cooking dinner. I had no choice but to go there. My whole body was tense, my hairs stood on end, and I didn’t dare to squint. I quickly pulled out a few pieces of firewood and pulled out my legs. run. Such funerals are often seen when children are young. I think every child will have a deep fear of the dark coffin, the scarlet covering and the special tung oil smell emitted by the coffin.

There is an east-west corridor-like place at the front of the main hall, called the main hall corridor. There is a corner door with an arched stone on each side on the left and right sides. The corner door leads to the corner room. At that time, the corner gate had no door panels, and only had two arched door openings made of huge rocks. It showed a little bit of exotic style. The story that happened under the doorway is my deepest childhood memory: One summer day when I was five years old, something lively happened outside the doorway on the west side. Many children gathered there to watch the fun. I was standing in the doorway wearing a little sundress. Look down. At this time, my cousin who is the same age as me also came. She wanted to squeeze in to see more clearly, but I suddenly became domineering and opened my arms to block the door opening. The door opening was about one meter wide, because my arms could not reach the wall at both ends. I blocked her left and right, but refused to let her go. My cousin was really a cruel girl. When she got anxious, without saying a word, she bit me hard on the arm. The strength of the child's teeth against the child's flesh is really not small! Two rows of deep tooth marks immediately appeared on my arm. The pain made me burst into tears. That lesson was deeply remembered because of the pain. From then on, I never dared to be domineering or arrogant anymore, even if it was just a joke.

My house is located to the east of the main platform. Different from the wooden structure house of my uncle’s house to the west of the main platform, my house is a renovated two-story blue brick house with a rooftop. . The first floor from the entrance is the kitchen, dining room and bedroom, the second floor is the study room, bedroom and small attic, and the third floor is half with a tile roof and half with a rooftop. The bedroom on the first floor is where our three sisters live. This bedroom is warm in winter and cool in summer. The most conspicuous thing in the room is a strong, tall, dark red canopy bed. The corner between the side of the bed and the wall is the toilet. A wooden seated toilet is installed. In the old houses, there was no separate bathroom. Going to the toilet was done on a wooden toilet, and the waste was dumped out only when the excrement collection truck came by every morning.

This bedroom is a good place for us three sisters to laugh and play. When night comes, we often close the door and play singing games, wrapping gauze scarves on our heads and pinning plastic flowers on our heads. , took out the adults’ clothes and trousers from the cupboard and put them on their arms, shaking them around. They imitated the plot of the scholar lady in the drama, and hummed the drama at the top of their lungs. They were both an audience and an actor, and they were very immersed in the game. ! One night, our parents went out and told us to go to bed early, but when we were having fun, we didn't care what time it was. Suddenly we heard the door open when they came home. In a panic, we tore off the props and stuffed them into the drawer. There was a ping-pong mess. After the sound, the second sister and I immediately jumped into bed. However, the eldest sister went to turn off the lights and was too late to get into bed in the dark. She didn't know what to think in her desperation and actually "chirped" and hid under the bed. My mother came in and turned on the light and saw that we were up to no good, so she first dragged the eldest son out from under the bed and beat him up, and then scolded the three of us. Although we often encounter such small accidents in our childhood, what are they compared to happiness?

Climb the wooden stairs to the second floor, which is my parents’ study and bedroom. The study faces south and has plenty of light. There is a large desk in front of the window, and two rows of large bookshelves stand on the east and west walls. My dad loves to collect books and buys them whenever he has spare money. Therefore, besides having many children, there are also many books in the house. A very special place in the bedroom on the second floor is the small loft, which is located behind the canopy bed in the bedroom and requires ascending two steps. The attic is a long, narrow and dark little black room. I always feel scared wherever I go, but I also feel that it has a strange attraction, like it is hiding a ghost, or there is a mysterious passage that leads to another world. .

The third floor is a large rooftop. At that time, few houses in the surrounding area were higher than my house, so the view from the rooftop was very broad. Every summer, after the sun goes down, we water the rooftop floor with water. After half an hour, the water dries up and the ground cools down. In the evening, the breeze blows slowly and the stars are dim. The family gathers on the rooftop to have dinner and listen to the music while eating. I listened to my dad talk about the Three Kingdoms and the Water Margin; after nightfall, I set up a bamboo bed and took a nap with the cattail leaf fan shaking. The memory of such summer nights is still very fond of me. When I was growing up, I was told to throw the extracted deciduous teeth straight towards the tiles on the roof. The straighter they are thrown, the better the new teeth will grow. So every time I lost a tooth, I would take it seriously on the rooftop. If you actually perform this ritual, you will indeed earn a set of neat teeth.

My father once recalled to us part of his time in the old house: when he was ten years old, not long after the founding of the People's Republic of China, his grandparents passed away due to illness, and all his aunts got married. At that time, the family was very busy. Poor, so poor that he had no money to eat, leaving only the house and the surrounding open space. The young father often sat alone on the rooftop playing the sad erhu, missing his deceased relatives. He was the only one guarding such a big house, which was very miserable. What's even more regrettable is that because of those properties, my father was classified as a landlord during the Cultural Revolution and was not allowed to go to college. Later, they got married and started a family, and all four children were born in the old house. The empty old house became full of vitality because of the crying and laughing children and the busy adults.

I have been immersed in memories for a long time... My memories before the age of six are all related to the old house. Memory is like a drawer that pops open one after another, constantly popping up vivid images, as if you can touch a brick on the wall of the old house, a piece of wood on the ground, and a piece of tile on the roof; like the man squatting at the door of the house to lift coal. The girl who played rubber bands, hopscotch, and played shuttlecock in the hall, the girl who stared at the dancing flames in the furnace as if she is still alive today.

In the late 1970s, our family moved to Fuzhou, and the old house fell into silence again. It no longer experienced any bustle. It once had a history of more than 300 years, and we were its last. A generation of masters. The old house once silently guarded our family and provided us with material security. More than 40 years later, it still clearly exists in our hearts and provides us with spiritual nourishment.