How long has it been since you visited your hometown?

I was not busy at work these days, so I took time to go back to my hometown.

My hometown is Xinyang, Henan, a place rich in Maojian tea and chestnut. Since I was admitted to live in a high school ten years ago, this has become the place where I come back at most once a month.

After graduating from college, I stayed in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, for another three years. The train ticket from Zhengzhou to my hometown is 46.5 yuan, and the high-speed rail ticket is 156 yuan. My biggest dream is to earn money, go back to my hometown once a month and take the high-speed train every time.

Even so, there are only a handful of times to go back to my hometown. There is a mountain opposite my hometown, which is not high and looks more than 500 meters. Before college, I would climb every holiday. At that time, my brother and my neighbor's sister followed me. Now, they all go out to work, so it is difficult to climb the mountain together. In addition, now that rural people have gone out to work, the mountains have not been built, and they are becoming more and more lush. Adults say there are wolves and wild boars, so they dare not climb mountains now. Every time I come back, I will walk around the house to see what has happened to tea gardens, vegetable fields and fish ponds.

Everyone in my hometown has gone out to work. For them, there is no money here, but I don't know that I often hear people say that my hometown is a good place with mountains and waters and beautiful scenery.

As far as I can remember, my hometown was once poor. In addition to farming and selling food, villagers earn money by selling firewood on the mountain. A car costs a few dollars. Around 2000, farmers began to return farmland to forests. Farmers stopped farming and planted tea trees and tung trees one after another. That is, after that, we gradually became a tea village here. Every household planted chestnut trees in the tea forest and dug a fish pond in front of the door.

Later, because there were many hills in the village, bluestone was needed to build roads. It seems that many stone fields have been built in the village overnight. Those "bosses" from other places came here with money and higher experience than the villagers, which also broke the tranquility of the village.

Villagers began to sell land and mountains, and many ten thousand households were born. A neighbor sold hundreds of thousands of mountains at that time, and then became a rich man with a car, a house and a mistress in the eyes of the poor. Now they have moved out.

My family didn't catch up with this "good thing". Sometimes I hate these intruders. They broke the original rules in the village, and their quarry took many lives.

I remember that the blasting of the quarry was all done by hand at that time. This kind of work is so dangerous that local people dare not do it. So "shooting" are all migrant workers from other places, and most of them are from Hunan. So in my impression, the earliest feeling that Hunan people gave me was boldness and barbarism. They rent a house in the village, eat snake meat and frog legs, and throw raw eggs directly into the fire to cook. I've never heard of this before, and I'm scared. Once, I told myself that I would never be friends with Hunan people when I grew up.

The Hunan native who impressed me the most was a young man. At that time, he was just married, young and shy, and went out to work with his fellow villagers. His new wife came here with her son for a while. I remember she gave me a packet of radish strips and two packets of instant noodles. She often brings her children to my house to watch cartoons with me after school. In my eyes, they are the most savage Hunan people.

However, one Sunday not long after, I came home from school and heard that he was dead and shot. Suddenly, the man disappeared from his life. At that time, his wife had returned to her hometown. I often feel sorry for her when I think of her. Later, I heard that she went back with compensation of 30 thousand yuan. Now, I don't know what kind of life she leads.

After high school, because the city has increased the publicity of tea, our place has also become a well-known tea town. The government no longer allows the stone field to continue to exist, and those outsiders have remained in my memory ever since. My hometown began to vigorously develop rural tourism, and resorts and farmhouses began to rise. Later, the government simply funded the village to unify into Huizhou architectural style, and the villagers became rich. Every time they return to their hometown, they feel that great changes have taken place here. Village cultural square, kindergarten, library and well-equipped hotel have been built in the village for the convenience of people who come on holiday.

Now, my hometown can often be seen on the list of many livable towns and beautiful countryside, and there are often photos of my hometown in the blog posts of many famous bloggers in this city. My hometown is getting better and better.

I have been outside all these years and have been to many places, cities, villages, cultural landscapes and natural scenery. I have been to many characteristic villages. I am amazed at the thinking of the villagers there, but I don't miss it, because there is no taste of my hometown.

The taste of hometown is that as long as you set foot on this land, there will be countless memories immediately, but as long as you are in it, you can relax, but as long as you are here, you will have many happy places.

But it is also a place that can never come back.

Li Jian sang in the song, "Unconsciously, I turned a foreign land into my hometown". Now, I will marry a woman and follow my other half to create my children's hometown.

And my hometown, as my brothers get married and have children, will also become children's memories.

? -written the night before leaving home.