Guanshanren's prose

In the numerous folds of Guanshan, there are many villages, large and small, consisting of several or dozens of adobe houses-this is Guanshan people.

Guanshan people are the history of Guanshan. A family is a chapter in this history. Every family in Guanshan is an epic that struggles against nature and strives for survival. It is ordinary and solemn and stirring, which makes people respect it.

There is no exact written record, and there is no special record. No one can tell how many people lived in the vast Guanshan Mountain, and when the earliest people settled in Guanshan Mountain. But one thing is certain-every family that has settled in Guanshan has a long or short story, and these stories with different contents are tragic, whether because of political struggle, natural disasters or other unspeakable reasons. There is also a feature that people in Guanshan have: most of them live in deep ditches, with inconvenient transportation and live in seclusion. Many people have asked me more than once, why did you fall into such a deep ravine? It's nice to live in mizoguchi. Transportation is always more convenient. I just smiled, noncommittally, because they couldn't understand how urgent it was for a person full of fear to find a place unknown to the world to hide!

I traveled along Guanshan more than once, from Huating, Gansu, where I live, to Jingyuan, Ningxia, and then to Longxian, Shaanxi, to find someone to visit Guanshan. There are tens of thousands of Guanshan people living in the Guanshan fold that stretches for thousands of miles. Although their ancestral homes are different and their skin color is red or black, after decades of' Guanshan Storm', they have become calm and unyielding, forming a unique folk custom and even having their own dialect slang. Live and work in peace and contentment and reproduce in that kind of unbearable hard environment. Look at their dark wrinkled faces and twisted fingers, and you can imagine how hard their lives are. Looking at their clear eyes like a mountain stream, you will feel their strength to bear the hardships of life. Even the hardships of a narrow escape will not destroy Guanshan people's persistence and love for life. Although their backs are bent by the heavy negative pressure of life, their spirits are still high and unyielding, and they have been plowed into ancient hieroglyphics on steep hillsides and gullies, which makes people respect.

One hundred years ago, our ancestors settled in the depths of Guanshan Mountain, where wild animals haunted, deserted ravines and depressions, slash and burn, build huts and build stone stoves. In the hands of our parents, the thatched cottage has surrounded the courtyard, and the prototype of a small mountain village has already taken shape. Some people's huts have taken the lead in turning into green tile adobe houses. As our generation was born in huts one after another, there were children in the village playing in the depths of Guanshan Mountain, and chickens barked and dogs barked vividly. The smoke from the kitchen connected with the blue sky and white clouds was even more graceful and beautiful. Our fathers tried their best to fight against heaven and earth and fate, bending their backs into strong bows ready to go, thinking that they must "shoot" us out of the mountains and hit the long-planned "bull's-eye" in their hearts.

Since then, a strange phenomenon has emerged: Guanshan people who live in the deep mountains and forests desperately send their children to school, while Chuandaoli people with convenient transportation and relatively good living conditions rarely pay attention to their children's reading, because life in Chuandao is far more moist than Guanshan. They are safe and don't need to worry. In the sixties and seventies, most Shanliwa, like me, finished middle school and high school with potatoes on their backs and a yellow face rake. The hunger, cold and fright they endured during this period are unimaginable to those who have never experienced it. Our distance from home to school, the nearest is 30 miles, and our little foot board has become a real ruler.

If we are suffering, then what our parents have to bear is simply suffering. Due to the cold and humidity in the depths of Guanshan Mountain, it is almost impossible to grow precious crops such as wheat and corn. Only cold-tolerant varieties such as potatoes, oats, buckwheat and rape can survive, but the yield of these crops is very low, which is often a harvest of "planting a sock and hitting a shoe". Only by making a living will the head of the family be helpless and sleepless all night. Fortunately, there are inexhaustible wild vegetables and fruits in the vast Guanshan Mountain, which helps us to fill our stomachs with meager food. Someone invented fried noodles with noodles and pears, fried noodles with sour pears, which were hard to swallow, but with them, the life of dying prematurely due to hunger was greatly reduced. In order to eat, mountain dolls not only eat all kinds of wild vegetables, but also eat sparrows flying in the sky, blind people drilling underground (scientific name Chinese zokor), badgers hiding in caves and even snakes. When hunger threatens life, I don't know what my inner fear is. As long as you have a full stomach, you won't starve to death, and finally you have a full stomach, but wearing clothes has become a thorny issue, because people in Guanshan can neither weave nor have raw materials for weaving. When they buy cloth in shops, they can still sell it by picking wild medicines and cutting brooms. But the number of cloth tickets to buy cloth is limited according to the number of people. A family of seven or eight people can only give less than half enough cloth tickets to make clothes. Skilled mothers try their best to come up with various methods. When a new dress is made into a big one, wear it first and then wear it in turn. When the front is worn out, the clothes are made in reverse, until the cloth is too rotten to wear the needle, and then it is pasted into buttons to make shoes. Our tuition is paid by our parents who pick wild vegetables and chop brooms in the Woods. Looking for money in the Woods requires not only sweating, but also bleeding if you are not careful. That's real hard-earned money!

Looking back, I am filled with emotion. After the implementation of the relocation project, the vast majority of Guanshan people have walked out of Guanshan and lived in a uniform new countryside. Many mountain villages have become empty shells, and dilapidated adobe houses are hidden in lush wormwood, telling the history of Guanshan people, witnessing the arduous past of Guanshan people, and telling the world a simple truth: the road is not far, and faith is invincible!

The mountain spring covered with thatch is still clear and sweet, and it is refreshing to drink it when you hold it. The mountain road as thin as a rope was swallowed up by weeds. In a trance, our parents and we walked forward with heavy burdens and gasped, which can't help but remind people of the hardships and bitterness of the past. It seems like a lifetime ago. When I saw these decaying adobe houses, I thought of the fingers of my ancestors. Their fingers were thick and deformed, as hard as iron harrows, and their rickety bodies were bent by mountains ... When I calmed down and faced the old adobe houses, I bent down deeply-there was a strong and unyielding soul hidden in the adobe houses!