The past of Malian River

Text/Fengyuan

At the southern end of my hometown, Fengcheng, there is a clear river - Malian River. It is the largest river in Qingyang. It was called Huangjian in ancient times. It was called Nishui, and after the Northern Wei Dynasty it was called Maling River. In the Tang Dynasty, two major tributaries, Maling Water and Baima Water, merged in the south of Qingcheng. The river section below Qingcheng was called Malian River. After flowing to Zhengping Ancient Town in Ning County, it merged with Jing River and Wuritiangou River to form the source of the Wei River; its full length 375 kilometers.

My village is located on the east bank of the Malian River.

Although I have been working away from home for many years, I will never forget the plants, trees, mountains and rivers in my hometown, as well as my relatives and friends. They are always vivid in my mind and haunted by dreams!

The most profound memory of my childhood is the unforgettable time spent on the banks of the Malian River.

I was born in the 1960s. At that time, every summer in the crystal clear Malian River, boys and children in our village dug for water (swimming), girls did laundry, and adults and children dug talc. place. Life was extremely poor at that time, and almost every family participated in talc digging. That is, during the off-farm season or after school, students went to dig talc on the Malian River beach. At this time, the clanging and digging sounds echoed throughout the whole village. The river bend, along with this special sound and people's talking and roaring, forms a sea of ??joy on the river beach.

"Talc" is a kind of pebble with a relatively smooth surface, which is used to burn lime or smash into triangular stones as building materials. We can use the talc we dug to exchange for some pocket money to support our family. In my memory, every time we celebrated June Day, the white shirts, blue pants, and white sneakers required in school were all obtained from the talc we dug out of the Malian River beach. I almost never asked my parents for pocket money to buy clothes or school supplies.

In that era, Malian River gave us a lot. There is a jingle in our hometown: "There are three treasures in Qingyang City. The stone walls will not fall down. There is no need to scoop water from Echidong. The Dragon King cannot send firewood for burning." This last sentence means that every flood season, heavy rains will Dry branches from the mountains and debris such as cattle and sheep dung rushed into the river. When the river rose, these things all floated on the water and flowed to my hometown. This brought good news to the villagers on both sides of the river. Our locals call it "fishing for firewood from the river". At that time, we all relied on it to simmer and cook. Every year, after the river rises several times, families on both sides of the river basically solve the problem of using firewood for cooking and kang burning throughout the year.

When I was a child, I had never seen a big river or sea. I was very excited every time I saw the river rise. The rising momentum of the river was very spectacular. The water flow was fast and the waves were like hills. The roar of the waves in the narrow bend of the river was deafening and made people on the shore shudder. We always had to wait on the river bank to watch the adults collecting firewood. We were very young at that time and our parents would not let us get too close to the river. Fishing for firewood was a matter for the adults, especially the men of the family, because it was a laborious job. It was very dangerous. In the past, people were washed away by floods while collecting firewood. My father had rescued people who fell into the water several times in the river. Therefore, women participated less. Out of curiosity, I once tried fishing for firewood. At that time, my father was beside me to encourage me. When I put the "basket" for collecting firewood into the water, I felt an unstoppable force. The strong force pulled me into the river. I was so frightened that I screamed repeatedly. I almost threw the fishing rod into the water, and I almost fell into the river. However, women and children also have something to do, which is to transfer the wet firewood that has been fished ashore to a higher place. Otherwise, if the water does not continue to rise, the firewood will be washed away all at once, and all the efforts have been wasted. Therefore, most of the tasks of transporting firewood home after the river flooded were completed by our brothers and sisters. My father and mother also had to work in the production team, which meant that we had to "go to work" on time every day.

Normally the Malian River is docile and weak, but when it swells in summer, the situation is comparable to that of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. The water is ferocious, the waves are overwhelming, the current is rapid, and the water is dozens of meters deep, which is really scary. My father was very young at that time and had good water skills. Every year when the river rose, he and a few young people in the village would pull out logs in the rough and swollen river, that is, big trees that had been washed into the river by the flood. It was very good. wood.

When my father was young, he was a well-known carpenter, so he made a lot of furniture for us using the wood delivered to us by the Malian River. Such as desks, bookshelves, wooden boxes, benches, etc. My brother and I also helped him pull the big saw, which was used to pull the logs into thin boards.

? Thinking back to the thrilling scenes of my father "pulling logs" in the flood, how brave they were? Every time he goes into the water, his mother sweats for him! At that time, because he was poor, my father took risks and went to the river to pull wood. Because he was young and good at swimming, he was safe every time. This was also a blessing for our family.

? Sometimes a few days before the flood season, my father and several men from neighbors would wait on the river bank at night to wait for the river to rise, in order to be able to catch the flood as soon as possible. Catching firewood or wood. Now that I think about it, that was such a dangerous move. But in those hard times, people had to take that risk to get some firewood.

In the summer of 1964, as in previous years, the Malian River swelled again, but this time the river swelled very much. The raging waves rolled and undulated, like overwhelming mountains and seas, flowing down the river. The crop fields above the river bank have overflowed and are almost as level as the road. The villagers were all watching the water situation outside their respective gates, waiting for the river water to recede a little before going to collect firewood.

Grandma also got up very early that day. As usual, she got up early to take care of me who was less than one year old. My mother made breakfast and everyone had breakfast. My father and mother quarreled for some reason. After that, my father went to the river to check on the situation of the river, and my mother took care of me at home. The adults are all busy with their own things. At dinner time, my mother put the food on the table and couldn't wait for grandma to come back for dinner. Dad went to the neighbor's house and asked, but there was no trace of grandma. Dad suddenly had an ominous premonition, and he became nervous...

Grandma's life was very bumpy, and her fate was just like that of the country at that time. Destiny is the same, full of hardships and hardships. In the 18th year of the Republic of China, grandma's hometown, Qishan, Shaanxi Province, suffered a severe drought, with people dying of starvation and banditry rampant. She got married and moved to Caijiapo. She had a child who was about one year old and was crying for food. Because there was no food and insufficient milk, the child kept crying all day long. She had no choice but to go to the mountains every day to pick some wild vegetables to satisfy her hunger. That day, as usual, I went to the mountains to pick wild vegetables. I was found by my brother-in-law at noon. He said that relatives came to see him and he was driving a big carriage. Grandma believed it and went down the mountain and was picked up by her brother-in-law. Who Unexpectedly, his carriage did not take grandma to relatives, but took her to a strange place. Soon a group of men came with several young women. They were forcibly pulled into two carriages by the men. They also tied the women's hands with ropes and chained them together. Cover your eyes with a black cloth. No matter how they struggled and cried along the way, the carriage ran quickly on the road. Soon they left their hometown. Since most women had never traveled far in their lives, they didn’t know where they were taken by these traffickers. After running around for days and nights, grandma was taken to Qingyang, Gansu Province. Several women were sold to local single men. Another woman who came with my grandma was also sold to my fourth grandfather.

? Grandpa is two years older than grandma. Although he was very poor at that time and worked as a long-term laborer for the landlord, his ideal wife may not be a woman like grandma. The grandma was already married in her hometown and had a child of her own. The child was very young and still nursing when she was taken away. She was forcibly taken away by the traffickers without saying a word to her family. She was so anxious that she spent her days here like years, shedding tears every day, missing her children and family, how could she have the thought to take care of the man in front of her. So the relationship between the two of them was not harmonious from the beginning. Quarrels are commonplace. After my grandma and grandpa got married, they gave birth to more than a dozen children in one day, but they all died due to lack of food, clothing, and medical treatment. Only my father survived in good health. Such an encounter left an insurmountable trauma and shadow on my grandmother's mind.

She became depressed and her illness worsened day by day. The quarrel between her parents that day made her very unhappy. When she saw her father going to the river, she thought that his father might commit suicide. A wave of panic hit her, and she went to the river without knowing it. At this time, the river was rising rapidly. Her mind was a little dizzy. Maybe she was thinking of her hometown. Half her life had passed. How was the child in her hometown? Are your loved ones safe? Maybe we can walk back to our hometown along this river. She walked along the river for an unknown length of time, and finally walked into the water. The raging river water instantly swept her into the middle of the water and rushed downstream. It happened so fast that no one noticed her. It wasn't until dinner in the afternoon that the family noticed she wasn't home. My father went out to inquire, and a neighbor said he had seen her by the river. After all, grandma did not return home all night.

The desperate father had to search downstream along the river the next day. After several days of searching, he finally found her in the river section of Zhengping Village in Ning County. She had been discovered by a kind-hearted local villager. She was buried on the spot. Her father was unable to bring her home at that time, so he had to thank the fellow villager and ask him to take care of her in the future, and returned home sadly. Malian River took away the grandmother who had suffered all her life, and maybe it sent her soul back to her hometown...

Decades later, the unexpected death of her grandmother left her father blaming himself for the rest of his life. He suffered from depression for a long time and later suffered from an incurable disease. In the midwinter of 1992, the weather was extremely cold. My father took his little brother to Zhengping and finally brought my grandmother's remains back and buried them with my grandfather. My father finally fulfilled a long-cherished wish during his lifetime.

I remember that 1999 was the last time my father collected firewood from the river. After that time, he became ill and suffered pain under his ribs. Only when he went to the hospital for examination did he find out that he had a serious illness. Three months later, he He passed away. This is a lifelong regret and guilt for me!

What Malian River has left in our memory is not only the small wealth it brought us in the past, but also the bitter past.

Today’s Malian River still flows day and night, and the sounds of our childhood playing beside it still seem to echo in our ears. It carries the joy and sadness of generations in our hometown. The passing years are like water, and the past is like smoke. It has witnessed the great changes in my hometown. It is a song that sings beautiful melody day and night. It is a poem that writes blessings and praises for a better life into its lines!

? I wish the Malian River in my hometown will always be clear and rippling, and I wish my relatives in my hometown will always be happy and healthy!