Aesthetic Prose of Back Water Drum

At the junction of Gansu and Qinghai provinces in the west, there is a beautiful and dreamy town called Paradise Town, named after Tang Tian Temple. People call it paradise for short.

A few years ago, we had to climb a ridge to reach the town. This mountain is called "Erjialong". There are a group of people who immigrated from Qinghai, perhaps because they are strangers. Their parents chose mountains and forests to live here. They have lived for a long time as far as I can remember. Unfortunately, this is the top of the mountain, and water resources are inconvenient.

In winter, when the wheat bundles spread out on every field in the village roll two or three times in the afterglow of the moon and stars, our dreams just wake up. At the end of the dream, a neat' drum' staggered from a birch forest, and the team was huge and heroic. Fill the winter sky.

"roar! It seems that the drum team of Jialong has come down. " The sound resounded through the whole village, and the children jumped out of the gate like crazy, some with half a boiled potato in their hands. This scene is like welcoming a well-dressed drum team, full of expression and frozen in the cold.

What kind of drum team is this? This is a pack team composed of people from the top of the mountain. They get together to carry water. Donkeys, large and small, have two flat round barrels hanging across their backs, tied with sticks. Some barrels are hung with an iron drum, while others are hung with homemade rubber leather bags. There are other accessories used to cover these devices. When this large group of people came down from the bumpy road, the collision between various musical instruments drummed like a waist drum. Sometimes full and tidy, sometimes full of rhythm. Coupled with carrying hands, this scene is very spectacular.

The "drum team" broke the dull squeak of the drum, and the beating of the broken wheat shell seemed to be related to the drums. The cold winter made the river ice ridges. Only the well more than ten feet deep by the river, the wellhead is steaming like a chapped lip, opening and closing.

"Come on, Amen's donkey reins are frozen."

"Oh, pull it up in one breath."

"Sanwa, stand with a bucket and pack your bucket like a dog."

Dozens of strong young men were out of breath around the well, and the leather ropes in their hands danced on the turf like snakes. The collision of iron drums was the sound of various musical instruments before a performance.

When the drum stopped to light the first pot of dry cigarettes, the water in the package team was full and the melody changed. Because going back is uphill, in order to prevent the imbalance from overflowing too much water, a floating board is put in each bucket. The drums dissipated in the damp back of those strong men, leaving only the deep and shallow ice trough of the well and wellhead.

The wolves left our sight and the drums faded away. A group of our children sat on the ridge like watching a full-length drama, watching them go back with full harvest. Sometimes the rope breaks and the bucket falls into the well; Sometimes the donkey runs across a river in surprise; Sometimes I see whose son-in-law comes to fetch water for the first time; Sometimes I see the ups and downs of smiles on their faces. Watching, there is a kind of joy that will turn into compassion, which is the pain that can't be sung.

When I went back these years, I passed by Erjialong, and occasionally I saw the water drum I heard when I was a child, standing quietly on the south wall of the champion. I think it will never make the sound of well water in the grinding of wind and rain.

There are rivers in the sky, and there is a river called Datong River. The era of water shortage in Erjialong has long passed, leaving only some memories of scaling and the warmth and happiness that make a well water more mellow.