My village

Every once in a while, I always open the electronic map, locate a mountain village, zoom in and zoom in again, and look down at the village where I was born and raised through the eye of the satellite. More than ten miles east of the southern Taihang Mountain, on the edge of the northeast corner of Linzhou Basin, this village called Majiashan is located here. Overlooking the god's eyes in satellite images and replaying the frames in memory will all be spliced into a clear three-dimensional picture in your mind. Except for mountains, it is a ditch. It's either a mountain or a ditch! Finally, a fertile field has emerged, which is still a slope with high north and low south, high west and low east. From the foot of the mountain, every descending section has high and low banks made of stones, which are piled up one after another until the bottom of the ditch.

Although I miss my hometown here very much, I still can't help but feel that it is really not a good place to live!

However, the ancestors who settled here hundreds of years ago certainly don't think so. They may have just hobbled under the old pagoda tree in Hongtong county, fled from other places hundreds of miles away, or migrated from Li Sanwu village, like migratory birds with nowhere to stay, but they are getting weaker and weaker. With family and family, travel-stained under the scorching sun. When they are tired of walking here, they sit on the rocks and have a rest. They have not gasped, carefully staring at the surrounding environment. Surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the ditch on one side, the soil is thin and thick. In addition to the thorny trees and weeds all over the mountains, there may be the howling of wild wolves in the distance. But because of this, no one pays attention to it, and the wilderness has become a nobody's land! Watching, their eyes are full of light and their throats are a little moist. This is it! I don't want to wander anymore! Finding a foothold and shelter in the drift from place to place is really a great discovery and brings great surprises! Although I have settled down, there are some difficult times, but what is it compared with the hard work all the way? As long as you have the strength and are willing to endure hardships, why can't this place become a beautiful home? They decided to settle down here. Set up a simple shed at the foot of the mountain, cultivate several wasteland of different sizes on the slope, and then sprinkle the crop seeds that you keep with you. The hope of life rises slowly with the newly lit smoke.

Because there are spurs everywhere, they call this place Spur Mountain. They built houses next to the century-old Spur Tree on the western hillside, and regarded all this as the shelter and shelter of the Spur Tree. In the following hundreds of years, their descendants regarded this ancient Spur Tree as a sacred tree, and it became a totem in the village. Villagers of all ages revere it and love it! Around this ancient tree, many beautiful legends have been produced, and the stories are full of the magic and kindness of the ancient Spur Tree.

Bai Juyi had a hard-won life story in Chang 'an in Tang Dynasty. Nowadays, people in major cities often lament living in Chang 'an. However, compared with the prosperity and everything in a metropolis, living in a backcountry with nothing is really hard. One is glamorous or lonely multiple-choice questions, and the other is the soul torture of survival and destruction. The first question of torture is draft. Of course, this is also nature's torture of everyone in Laolin County. There is water in the ditch weir two or three miles west of the village. The villagers come here to live every day, scoop them into wooden barrels and pick them home one by one along the gully. This rare trace of clear water not only nourishes the men, women and children in the village, but also nourishes the wolves nearby. People and wolves compete for this saliva, and the result is either disability or death. Such a tragedy has been staged for hundreds of years. In order to avoid wolves, it is the iron rate in the village not to go to Xigou to fetch water after dark. It's so difficult to drink a mouthful of water, let alone water the crops. Helpless people have to pin their hopes on the Dragon King, who is always calling the shots and expecting his old man's house to rain and dew in Okanagan Valley, instead of seeking good weather, only hoping that crops will be harvested and people will not go hungry. On a flat land in the east of the village, there is an antique Longwang Temple with a history of more than 200 years. However, year after year, people are so pious that they worship generation after generation. They don't need rain to get the wind, but most of the time they still have to face the ironclad reality of drought and little rain.

Time came to the 1950s, when the social form of farmers' own life was replaced by the collectivization of cooperatives, and the long-term scattered forces easily gathered together, generating huge energy. Under the leadership of party member, a village cadre, the villagers quickly reached an agreement: bring the water from the west end of the village to the village. It's easy to say, but it's actually a very complicated project to make the water obediently obey people's will and shuttle over mountains and ditches to the village, especially for farmers in mountain villages who have no technical experience. After several months' efforts, the villagers split mountains, dug ditches, dug pits and built ponds, and finally brought water to the village, which not only solved the domestic water for people and animals, but also watered dozens of acres of fields. It's hard to know what happened. Everyone cheered and many old people shed tears with excitement! This feat in the village quickly caught the attention of Yang Gui, secretary of Linxian County Party Committee. He made a special trip to the water diversion site for many times, and held a county-wide water conservancy construction site meeting here in February 1956, calling on the county to learn from Majiashan and set off a new climax of water conservancy construction! At the mobilization meeting of 1960, Yang Gui once again mentioned Majiashan: "A mountain village with a population of 1000 can introduce springs from deep ditches into the village. With more than 600,000 people in our county, can't we introduce Zhanghe River water into Linxian County? " For this matter, the villagers have talked about it so far, saying that the Dahongqi Canal Project was inspired by the water diversion project in our village. Although it is exaggerated, it is undeniable that the water diversion project in Majiashan Village certainly provides a good idea for Secretary Yang Gui who is thinking about how to change the water shortage situation in Linxian County. With the completion of the Hongqi Canal, the second main canal bypasses the mountainside behind the village and flows eastward. In order to keep and save more water, men, women and children once again went into battle collectively, digging ravines, tamping foundations, building stone walls and piling earthwork. It took more than three years to build two large reservoirs of earth-rock dams on the hillside under the second main canal, which not only irrigated thousands of acres of fields in the village, but also raised fish, fishing and fishing. The water-deficient mountain village became a small south of the Yangtze River overnight. The reservoir is built in the west of the village, where wolves compete for water. A dam is blocked between the valleys, where the sloping water of the Hongqi Canal gathers into a pool of blue waves, reflecting the mountains and rivers, which is pleasing to the eye. Surrounded by mountains and waters, materialized circulation, wind gathering and gas gathering show a prosperous atmosphere. Standing on the second main canal in the mountains, looking at the sparkling reservoir under your feet, the golden light of the sun on the water seems to have paved a golden avenue for the village.

Liu, a young village cadre who led the villagers to divert water from Xigou, later led the team of Heshun Commune to participate in the construction of Hongqi Canal, and creatively set up air transportation lines on cliffs, which greatly reduced the labor intensity and accelerated the progress of the project, and became a meritorious figure in Hongqi Canal Project. Later, he presided over the construction of Nangudong Reservoir, Dazhong Coal Mine and Linxian Thermal Power Plant, and moved to the north and south on the land of Linxian County, becoming a doer of Linxian politics and the official chairman of Linzhou CPPCC. Another young man who witnessed the changes in the mountain village is Cui. He put his passion into words, published it in the provincial newspaper and published it as a booklet. In the following decades, he insisted on writing, became the first novel writer in Linxian history, became a literary leader in Linxian and even northern Henan, and helped and supported many new scholars in the post of chairman of Anyang and Linzhou Writers Association.

There are two roads leading to the outside world in the village, one passing through Donggou in the east and the other passing through Xigou in the west. For hundreds of years, if people want to leave the village, they need to bend down the ditch, walk on the rocks at the bottom of the ditch for a while, and then climb up the ditch to move on. There are not only ditches in the west, but also solid Zhushan. This rocky mountain is blocked on the road west of the village. Every time people leave the village, they should look up and ponder! So it was suggested that maybe Yugong could move mountains, dig out Pearl Mountain, fill Xigou Donggou into Ma Pingchuan, and fill Nangou with ravines, by the way, to completely solve the traffic congestion problem in the village. This project is too big, far beyond the capacity of a village. As a result, the village planning and design, invested a lot of manpower and material resources, just built two highway bridges in the deep ditch at both ends of the village. The natural barrier becomes a thoroughfare, and the road to the outside world is getting wider and wider. One hundred thousand troops left Taihang, and groups of villagers set out from these two roads and went to the construction sites in the east, west, north and south. They build their motherland outside and go home to build their homes. In rugged villages, even uniform, rows of brick-concrete buildings are arranged neatly and orderly. The thatched houses and adobe houses of our ancestors are hard to find.

Three kilometers north of the village, there is a temple called Wuping Temple, which has existed since the Han Dynasty. However, it has been ill-fated. Historically suppressed by the government by force. On the other hand, five booms and five busts can be described as five ups and downs. Like the villagers at the foot of the mountain stumbling from generation to generation. The stone tablets of the temple are engraved with words decades ago and hundreds of years ago, recording the rise and fall of the temple. Now the temple has become a temple. Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, as well as the old gentleman, Guan Yu and the Dragon King have all come. The inclusiveness of China culture is fully reflected in this temple. These immortals are so close that no one bothers anyone. They live in harmony, just like several big names in the village. They have been in the village for hundreds of years in the blink of an eye. Most temples were built during this decade. Good men and women collect firewood, and it has gradually become what it is now. They are not only people's beliefs, but also people's yearning for a better life. The immortals in the temple are silent, sitting in the temple, looking all the way down the hill and into the distance.

In this small village, I actually thought of making village records. Not only did I do it, but there were three books, village records, genealogy and Wuping Temple. The three books show the historical evolution and changes of the village, trace back the virtues of ancestors, sort out the context of all surnames in the village, and record the diligent advice of modern people, with millions of words, which is true and sincere. There is such a detail in the village annals: earlier, after water was diverted into the village, a drinking pool was built. At that time, just in time for the country to level the land, the villagers used their ancestors' tombstones as stone materials. If the ancestors knew that future generations could drink water at home, they wouldn't mind doing so, but they would be happy to make some contributions to future generations. However, the elders in the village are still afraid and obsessed with this. Decades later, they still advise future generations in village records that if the residence changes or the pool is rebuilt, they must find the tombstone of their ancestors and re-establish the sacrifice. His words are incisive and touching!

Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors would never have thought that their descendants would one day leave this village and enter the county, provincial and capital cities, such as the highest plough in the water margin and a single spark, which could start a prairie fire all over the country and even the world. Instead of following in the footsteps of their ancestors to escape and beg for food, they entered a new world with great ambitions. Some people were admitted to Tsinghua and Peking University, the highest universities in China. In these hundreds of years, only one scholar mountain village was born, which can be described as flying out of golden phoenix; Some people have become civil servants of the central ministries and commissions, taking part in state governance with rural simplicity; Some people have entered state-owned enterprises and central enterprises, contributing to the country's strategic map of the Belt and Road; Some people have worked hard in a foreign land, and their careers are booming ... some people have stayed in the village. They planted walnut trees and pepper trees on the hillside full of weeds and thorns. Those barren hills that made our ancestors look at the ocean and sigh, have now become a treasure house of gold and silver. As long as they are free, people in the village are willing to take a walk and turn around in the mountains, so that their bodies and minds can be integrated into the mountains and rivers and their hearts can be relaxed. The only regret is that the bright teaching building of the school came too late. Because people went out, the number of students decreased, and they didn't catch up with the times when children were noisy and books were loud, so they could only accompany students in twos and threes. Friends in the WeChat group often talk about bits and pieces of their hometown, in addition to childhood memories, there are every detail and change now. After vicissitudes and pessimism, hometown is still the most livable spiritual home. Foreign partners will fantasize that they will return to the basics when they are old, and the local accent will not change. They are still teenagers here!

According to records, the first ancestors came to Majiashan during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, that is, 1573. This is a familiar copy. Whenever the voice of Guojiao1573 "You can taste 446 years of history" is heard on TV, I can always think that this is also the historical year of our village. In 446, many generations cut through the thorns and opened the way, turning Maji Mountain into Majia Mountain.