Appreciation of Yu Jicong's Prose "Life in Ruins"

Since last spring, several villages in our village Committee have been demolished. First, Caijiachong Village and Xiejiahe Village were demolished, followed by Wangjiatun Village and Yuanshuqiao. By the end of last year, Caijiachong Village had been completely demolished, and Yuanshuqiao Village was basically demolished. These two villages, which I have been familiar with since childhood, have disappeared. We have many relatives in these two villages. In the past, every quiet morning and evening, people's voices in these two neighboring villages, such as mother calling children home, cow Cleisthenes barking dogs, roosters crowing, hens laying eggs, villagers crowing chickens and barking dogs, all spread to our village with the wind. Now, people in both villages have moved to other places in the distance to rent houses. It is not easy to see them. It is impossible to hear them talking, quarreling or calling children, calling chickens, pigs and cattle and sheep at the village entrance every day.

Since the end of last year, our Wangjiatun village has been demolished. Because several villages in our country have built straight and wide roads, two rows of dense street lamps have been erected on the side of Dongsheng Road in the East Second Ring Road. Because of the demolition of several villages, because the farmers in several villages "turned from peasants to peasants", the village Committee was changed into a community.

Last autumn and winter, after there was little left in the demolition of Caijiachong village, cats and dogs from their village wandered into our village, and birds such as sparrows, cuckoos, magpies and crows from their village migrated, wandered and gathered in our village.

Now our village has been demolished, leaving only six or seven houses on the hillside in the northwest of the village. Most villages have been demolished and turned into a pile of rubble and bricks. Reluctance to those tall loquat trees, pomegranate trees, Sydney trees, fig trees and grapes in my hometown yard, and reluctance to sign a contract to agree to the demolition, almost affected the demolition process of the village, and even affected the urbanization process of my hometown, becoming a "nail house." These fruit trees in my hometown yard have blossomed and borne fruit years ago. In early spring, white pear flowers and green grape flowers are in full bloom, and in early summer, fiery pomegranate flowers are in full bloom, as well as milky loquat flowers. When it is in full bloom, my small yard is beautiful, flowers are overflowing, and bees and butterflies can always be seen flying over the courtyard wall and falling in. On a hot midsummer night, my family was sitting in the yard to enjoy the cool. On a cold winter afternoon, I was sunbathing in the yard with my parents and nephews. How happy and comfortable! When the fruit is ripe, a string of green or purple grapes, green or purple figs, huge red pomegranate, white transparent Sydney and orange loquat are all extremely beautiful and sweet.

Nowadays, no matter day or late at night, there are homeless stray dogs and cats wandering in groups outside our village. It seems that they really want to enter our village. Sometimes, they have the courage to sneak into our village regardless. In fact, more than half of our village is collapsed ruins, and there are very few people left in the yard. Where can we find the corner where they live?

Before long, these demolished and pushed bricks and reinforced concrete will be removed, towed away by endless trucks, or pushed by countless large bulldozers and rollers, buried in the deep ditch of low-lying Batang Mountain and buried in the soil. At that time, these people were forced to lose their homes and move from one village to another, and even could not find such rubble, bricks and old wooden stakes and such ruins to live in.

My family has almost become the last family in the village to move. Many people moved away happily early, because they were satisfied with the compensation and resettlement for the demolition of the parcel. I don't want to move, so do a cousin who works outside the home and some families who work outside the home in several neighboring villages. We have lived in the countryside for generations, and we all have ancestral houses with a big yard, which will be demolished soon. In the future, we plan to resettle the community. Without our shelter, it is tantamount to forcibly driving us out of the village and cutting off our blood relationship with the village. Especially for me, my hometown and countryside are the roots, confidence and charm of my literary creation, which cut off my literary roots at once. The village director joked that Long Mai in our village has been poached, so it is impossible for me as a writer to write more and better works and become more famous. The meaning in the words is that once the context of Long Mai in the village is cut off, my fame and my writing can only be like this, and I can only go as far as today.

At this time, it is early summer. In my hometown yard, pomegranate flowers are as red as fire, and Sydney, grapes, loquat and figs are covered with branches, so they stick to the village and become a collapsed ruin. The road in the village was also cut off by the excavator, so I couldn't get in or out. My mother has been helping me. Because our home is on the hillside and the small yard stands tall, it is impossible to push the soil up and cover the small yard of our hometown like other people in the village. And because the back of my yard is the East Second Ring Road, it is absolutely impossible to push away the soil around my house and let my foundation and house hang high. Therefore, my small yard and my mother can persist until the end. In the end, they almost gave me a good reputation as a "nail house", constantly putting pressure on my mother and my brother and forcing my relatives to convince me in disguise. Finally, I had to reluctantly sign an agreement to agree to the demolition, and pressed a lot of my red handprints on it. At that moment, I knew I couldn't hold my village. I gave up a person's insistence, and my heart was full of sadness, not as happy as my brothers. I am sorry for my ancestors. Or you can say you deserve them. After all, I persisted until we were alone in a small yard, until my house arched out like bamboo shoots in the collapsed ruins.

In fact, there are a large group of people living in the countryside who accompany me and my mother and stick to this dilapidated village until I sign it. Even after I signed it, these lives still cling to our village in the ruins, or there are still a lot of rural lives clinging to our village in the ruins. They are a large group of village dogs, cats, mice, crickets, frogs, grasshoppers, ants, etc., swimming around in the ruins. Many village birds, such as magpies, swallows, orioles, cuckoos, turtledoves, Dai Sheng birds, sparrows, crows, etc., stick to the ruins and fly around.

When I went back to the village for the last few times, my second brother's house next to my yard had been demolished and dug into pieces, but it was close to half of my house, and the demolition team had difficulty in construction, so it was left behind. Many suddenly homeless village dogs live in the second brother's house. I climbed up the ruins and the dog cursed at me. They are still sticking to the village, or mistaking me for the demolition team and swearing at me. Good mother, get a big pot of food every day and take it to the roadside for these stray dogs who stick to the village. My heart hurts. The village was basically in ruins and was taken away by carts one after another. In a few days, these stray dogs will have no place to live in this former village.

Every morning, there will still be magpies singing and dancing in the ruins of the former village entrance, as if looking for a familiar family, and there will still be Dai Sheng birds, cuckoos and sparrows singing in the ruins of the former village entrance. The demolition team not only demolished the houses in the village, but also removed the bricks, stones and stones, and easily sawed down hundreds or even hundreds of years old trees outside the village with a chainsaw. Once the village, first turned into a collapsed ruins, and then pushed into a flat and open field, good-looking is good-looking, but before every household, pear flowers, apricot flowers and pomegranate flowers, gourd pumpkins full of fruits, bees flying, butterflies flying, vibrant small yards are gone.

The last time I went back to the village, I almost dared not go into the ruins. The sunshine in summer is like blood, and the inner pain is unbearable. I saw some little owls and some little Dai Sheng birds in the ruins. These young birds are still very delicate, with yellow "yellow watercress" on their mouths, as lovely as baby teeth. But they suddenly lost their nest. They are at a loss. They can't find their parents or a comfortable nest. Outside the village, thick and tall trees were sawed down by chainsaws one by one. It collapsed in minutes, and it took decades or even hundreds of years to grow up. They once accompanied several generations of people in the village and became the settlement and home of several generations of birds. I saw the ruins of the fallen owl chicks. There used to be several ancient and tall chestnut trees that covered the sky and the sun. In autumn and winter evenings, these ancient trees keep warm from the wind. Afternoon and evening in summer and autumn are cool and pleasant. 365 days a year, villagers like to sit under the tree and chat, while owls like to build nests among the branches and leaves at the top of the tree. In the ruins, I also saw a litter of poor kittens, half-open with innocent and lovely eyes, looking timidly at the collapsed world in the ruins. They still don't understand what it means to lose a warm nest.

Now the tree has fallen apart, the owl family has been separated, and so has our village. Life that has lived here for hundreds of years, once dispersed, is generally uncomfortable. Although scattered to nearby villages or cities in the mountains to rent houses, the villagers are still reluctant to stay away from this former home. Every day, I come back to grow vegetables and crops, regardless of distance, by motorcycle or on foot, carrying farm tools. Although the village has sold the land and signed a land transfer agreement, it is said that planting will be banned soon, but the villagers are still clinging to this land for planting. Our mother, who was taken to live together in the city, still has to go back by car every day to her hometown village, which was demolished into ruins and cleaned up, and continue to grow vegetables and crops according to the solar terms. For example, before the rainy season comes, my mother will plant pond pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, corn seeds or a small piece of pepper seedlings on the roadside. When several rains fall, beautiful pumpkin vines will crawl all over the roadside or hillside, beautiful sunflowers will be proudly held in the countryside like the bright face of a village girl, or green corn plants will stand under the blue sky, or girls' fingers will be as slender as green and red peppers. They are all busy at the edge of the ruins, thirsty, roasting in the hot sun, drying for a while, and raining for a while. They work hard.

As for the birds that fell from the trees to the ruins, I want to take them back to the mountains, but they can't leave their homes. As soon as I caught them, they got into the rubble. And maybe those bugs.

A few days later, the demolished brick and wood rubble has been cleared, and a large village has disappeared, which was quickly leveled by excavators and bulldozers.

Before the demolition, in order to get more compensation for the demolition, many people borrowed money to build houses everywhere, and almost all relatives and friends who might borrow money were begged, and everyone built new houses. Originally, it was a village that was about to be demolished, but it was soon built densely, with tall and beautiful brick houses everywhere. Some people even secretly went to Gai Lou in the middle of the night a few days before taking pictures, and the yard was densely packed. Every family received a large compensation for demolition. My relatives have never seen so much money. The whole village is very happy, but they are all in pain, with broken bones and blood.

As for me, although I am occasionally a little happy in my heart, I have been haunted by sadness and melancholy for a long time, and I can't find a deep hatred to vent.