The second old story: robbing the east of rain

"East Rain" is a summer rainstorm in Chongqing, Sichuan. On Zhang Shenyi's Shu Dialect Volume in Qing Dynasty: "Rainstorm in summer, rain in the east." Due to the unique geographical location of Sichuan Basin, the southeast wind blows a lot, and rain clouds also blow from the southeast. Rain often extends from east to west, so people call it "east wind rain" figuratively.

Although I have been away from my hometown for more than 20 years, I still try so hard to recall the situation when I was a child.

When I was a child, there were more than ten families living in my compound, with a dam in the middle. In the corn harvest season, the weather is very hot, and parents take advantage of the cool weather in the morning to break off the corn early. The children all help to cook and cook pork (a big pot of pig food) at home. As soon as the sun came out and the weather was fine, they began to sweep the dam again, and moved the corn to the dam bit by bit with a small dustpan and went out to dry. Now that I think about it, why are young men and women in Sichuan and Chongqing so hard-working? In fact, most of them are forced by traditional farming life.

At ten o'clock, my parents went home one after another and began to take out their corn and hang it on the dam in the basement. When the adults came home, the children began to have a rest. Generally, I just packed my tools and rushed to the corn field with bamboo poles to steal chickens. In the countryside, every household keeps chickens in free range. In fact, it's okay for chickens to eat corn, but they should be fed anyway. But some chickens are very annoying and shit in it, so when they see the chickens coming, they immediately beat them far away with bamboo poles.

Drying corn is a daily necessity for every household. As long as it is sunny, corn will be dried on the basement dam every day. When the sun rises, the weather will be hot. The whole family began to enter the house to drink water and have a rest. Adults began to do housework, and children put a small bench under the eaves with long bamboo poles. When they found the chickens coming, they drove them away. Every half an hour, they turn the corn with a rake to make it dry faster.

As time goes by, the sky is scorching, and the cicadas on the trees scream with heat, just as people gradually calm down from the busy atmosphere in the morning, some start to take a nap, and some turn over the sun-dried corn in the scorching sun, thinking that this dam corn has been sun-dried for three days, and it will be put into storage in two days.

Suddenly, it was cloudy, and adults looked up at the sky with mixed feelings and found one or two thick dark clouds floating in the sky. The first person who found the dark clouds shouted in a panic, alas, this cloud is so big that it is going to "grab the rain in the east" So, people ran out of the house one by one and rushed to the basement dam, shoveling and sweeping, and adults and children went into battle together. Oh, that's just a waste of time.

So, after a while, people saw the dark clouds run away, and then they began to move the corn out of the dam and spread it out to dry. They all wanted to dry it in the shortest time.

It is not always possible to harvest the grain before it rains. Sometimes the sun is shining, and when people are busy with other things, the wind suddenly blows. The east wind and rain came in a hurry. Raindrops hit the ground and immediately wet the glass mouth. This kind of east wind rain without warning is particularly turbulent. People were so tired that they couldn't breathe, but some corn was still wet and people were caught in the rain.

Sometimes the rain in the east comes slowly. Let people listen to the rolling thunder first, showing his power, which will scare people to the green, but the rain will not come, as if pity the hard-working people. Of course, people are still not at ease, anxiously shouting "grab the east" and running around. The experienced old man looked at the sky and shouted, "Don't worry, it's still raining on the other side of the river." With this guarantee, everyone breathed a little sigh of relief.

Sometimes, the rain in the east just passes by and plays tricks on people. When people heard the thunder, they hurried to harvest the crops, but it just didn't rain. When I looked up, it was dark all around, only the sky above me was bright, but whether it rained or not, I was always so nervous about grabbing corn!

Every time I grab the east rain, I'm sweating like rain and soaking wet, but I feel happy when I grab the corn. It was raining in the east, and suddenly it became cold. Adults and children stood under the eaves, watching the rain fall from the sky like strings of beads, watching the corn kernels that had not been cleaned on the dam washed up by the water, and the rain on the roof flowed down the eaves like curtains. The children were barefoot, and the water flowing from the eaves hit the instep, itchy, cool and fun, instantly diluted and robbed the corn.

Every time after the east wind and rain, there will be some topics left for people to flip through and chat in their leisure time. For example, who first discovered the dark clouds; Whose adults rushed to the scene, who didn't win more with less, and the corn was caught in the rain; Who robbed quickly that day, but also helped others rob; Or who said loudly that it wouldn't rain that day, but it came anyway. ...