Urgently seeking Tangjiawan literature

Yao Lu

The most intuitive and distinctive ancestral heritage of Jiangnan Shuicheng culture is the architecture of Tangjiawan.

Tangjiawan runs north and south. Looking south from Yingchun Bridge, it looks like the blue bricks and tiles in China. The entrance section is 60 meters, and the west end is a short dead lane called Li Taiping, the house number is only 10, and the east end is connected to the laundry pier.

Residents here generally don't call their own house number, but they are used to calling it "a courtyard". "Liu Jia" and "Qian Jia", the courtyard is well preserved, and there are more than three places. China literati are quiet, and many yard owners have big rules, so they can't get into the door. If the children stay in front of his house, there will be a dignified voice coming from inside, so they have to run away.

Generally, the doors of such houses are all three steps, with eight-character wall doors and two big wooden doors. After a long time, they are painted black and the doors are mottled. The threshold is over a foot high. Changzhou dialect, your threshold is high, I am afraid it comes from this. It means to bend over when entering the door to show respect for the host. There are two formats for entering the door. One is that the gate has a waterproof tile roof, and the entrance is a three-bay bluestone yard. The deep courtyard is three or four feet, very imposing and sunny. Two trees are planted in the yard, which is convenient for drying. Then there is a tall hall house, with a hall in the middle and people living in the hatchback. The hall is the living room, with a long Yuntai in the middle, vases and clocks on it, and a wooden wall with nave paintings on it in the background, with couplets hanging on both sides.

There is a square table in front of Yuntai and a plush chair around it, which is the reception reading room of Old Master Q. The left and right sides of Yuntai cross the small threshold, leaving a two-frame passage leading to the second entrance hall, opposite which is another entrance room, then the hall and then the entrance.

Another style, the door is similar, but the door is advanced, leaving two or three rooms, with two closed wooden doors in front, which will be opened when guests come, which is called "wide open middle door" to welcome guests. You can walk around without letting outsiders see the whole picture. I think women in feudal times should avoid people. Behind the middle door is the hall, and then the hall. The third entrance is the same, but the house is higher The elders used to live, and the younger generation always lived first.

Most of the two rooms are "Zhang Ba" high. After a long time, the paint has worn off, revealing its original features, and every knot is very clear. The roof is made of wooden rafters, Wang Zhuan and Benwa. If there are too many cats and the tiles are messy, it may leak. There are often ridges between tiles in old houses. The floor is five or six inches higher than the brick floor, overhead, moisture-proof, and there are air holes in the corner. In this way, there are seven more in the old house, including wasps with iron mouths, bats, mice, sparrows, snakes, "Wong Tai Sin" (weasel) and cats, which are also the characteristics of China and become the ecological chain of family animals.

My home is at No.9 Taiping Lane at the entrance of Liujia Courtyard. Liu Jiazu is an upper-middle official. According to the neighbors, the house was given by others' flattery. Sanjin, three halls and a backyard. My family lives in the east of the third hall, with nine rooms before and after, and the north and south of the middle hall are tall lattice long windows. Liu has his own characteristics. The guest room is actually pouring water with cement. Mrs. Liu, the landlord, proudly said, "This is imported cement, which was rare in those years." She lives in Xi Shou, with floors, partitions and curved ceilings. The north and south windows of the east and west rooms were also unusually large and transparent at that time. There are four western-style windows in the south, one facing north. Except one can be pushed horizontally against the wall, the other three upper grids can be lifted and the lower grids can be pulled up. Under my window is my father's desk. I remember a brick carving one and a half feet high and more than two feet long embedded in the east wall with the word "Lu Jing" written on it. I think this room should be Liu's study.

There is a persimmon tree in the hall, on which many fungi are older than the previous year. I dare not eat, for fear of poison. This tree is too thick for an adult to carry. It is three or four feet high and has a big roof. Every year, Mrs. Liu puts in a good word and asks a bricklayer to climb the tree with a ladder and then beat the fruit with a bamboo pole. We can't wait for masons to finish-in fact, they never finish, and bamboo poles can't reach them. This will be even colder. As soon as the north wind blows, persimmons will fall and soak in rice, and the doors of June 7 will be red. I will help you solve it early.

South of the partition wall of Tang Ming is the back garden. These flowers are used by Mrs. Liu, the landlord, to grow tobacco. She smoked when she was young. Now that the old man is dead, she is reluctant to buy it. She planted it herself and rolled it herself. In the corner brick pile, there are many snake heads and dragon head-shaped roof bricks left over from buildings. There are bamboo, jujube and buttonwood trees in the yard.

The roof of Gaotang is like an anticlimax, as a row of tiles. It's a pity that the children are naughty. Slingshots are bigger than Fang, but they can't beat sparrows. The snakehead became the target of public criticism, broke the leak, and then was simply abandoned. Since then, I have never seen such ornaments anywhere else.

Talk about my snake. There are many mice and snakes under the floor and on the roof at home, so it is not good to keep cats. More than once, I saw a big snake four or five feet long under the bed and caught a big mouse. At that time, every household was short of food, and food could not be hidden anywhere. They hate rats very much. Snakes can't be killed. Everyone says that killing a domestic snake will bring bad luck and would rather believe it. How big is this snake? I am a soldier. I haven't seen him. Brother said: one day, he woke up and there were two long white gauze fluttering on the bamboo pole under the eaves outside the window. Strange, when I came out, I was too scared to say anything. This is a long and wide snakeskin coat. The roof is three feet high, and the snake clothes are wrapped around several bamboo poles side by side for two times, and the two ends hang down, like children's diapers, fluttering in the wind! I'm afraid this python can only hide in three roofs. There are two layers of rafters and bricks in the room, one high and the other high. The space is huge, and the sun can't penetrate in summer. How's the food? Think impassability, dare not think.

After the Cultural Revolution, with the implementation of the housing reform policy, residents moved out one after another, and the whole Tangjiawan was demolished and developed. The word "Tangjiawan Street" is a relic. I have been thinking, will those relocated households be scared by snakes?