Walk into Jinggang ancient town

Looking at the city in winter, there are blue sky and white clouds. After the harvest, the farmland under the sunshine looks very bright. The wide and flat Leifeng Avenue runs through the fields and extends to the distance. The neat and orderly street trees are half green and half yellow, and the occasional ginkgo tree has covered itself with golden armor. My classmate Jiang and I chatted all the way to the seaside, and unconsciously the tourist bus took us to Jinggang ancient town, a famous tourist town in the south of the Yangtze River.

* Photography/Zhang Yeheng

This ancient town was named after General Li Jing, who was here in the Tang Dynasty, and won the hearts of the people. This ancient town is built on the north bank of Lu Hua River. There are no high-rise buildings, usually two floors, and a few are four floors. Generally, they are all pure wood structures, some are brick and wood structures, but they are all white walls and black tiles. The eaves of the house are tilted upward, like a bird spreading its wings, light and lively.

We strolled along the bluestone road in the ancient town, only to see tourists in twos and threes smiling at the dazzling array of special foods in street shops, some tasting, some bargaining with the boss, and some holding big bags and small bags.

This is a place where Huxiang snacks gather. Many storefronts in the street are hung with red and yellow horizontal labels and banners with the names of products sold in their stores. Black classics-Changsha stinky tofu, rice tofu, 100 pills, spicy and mellow dried fruit, small bowl of sweet wine, sugar and oil Baba, small flower slices, sweet potato slices, jujube slices, artificial Baba, crispy fish, grilled fish, ginger, sesame bean tea, tea scraps and so on filled the whole street.

The cries of the stall owners are one after another, and what's more, there are special food advertisements shot by Hunan TV Station on the big TV screen.

* Tuyuan/Cheng Hongbin

We climbed over the stone arch bridge covered with small red lanterns along the street and came to the street near the water. There was a table by the handrail near the water. Immediately, a young proprietress came to the opposite shop, holding two cups of ginger beans in her hand and greeting us with a big smile. "Hey, two, please sit down and try the ginger bean tea in our shop." Then clean the table and put down the teacup.

We were moved by her enthusiasm and politeness and nodded in agreement. She gave us a wooden chair made of willow branches, and we felt very comfortable sitting on it. It is the right size and height. This kind of wooden chair is hard to see in cities now, but it is widely used in most families in rural areas. This is the legacy left by our ancestors.

Later, she crossed the street and took a thermos bottle from the shop. She poured boiling water into the teacup and only heard a sizzling sound. The spicy taste of ginger, the sweet taste of sesame and the refreshing taste of beans floated into my taste buds with the wind. I feel a little sweaty after drinking a cup of tea. It seems that this tea is a good food to drink in winter, which can dispel cold, stimulate appetite, benefit qi and refresh oneself.

Drinking fragrant tea and tasting a plate of crispy fish brought by the proprietress, two of our old classmates talked about the time when we were studying in Changsha in the early 1960 s. Every time before school started, we came to Changsha by small fire boat from Tianjin. When the ship was about to arrive at Jinggang, a crew member on board shouted to the passengers with a metal megaphone: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Jinggang dock is coming. Please take your luggage and belongings and get ready to disembark. "

At that time, I knew nothing about Jinggang except that it was not far from Changsha. Through research, it is known that Jinggang was originally an important port departure terminal in Wangcheng County, Xiangjiang River. Baili Pseudo-Water River flows through this place from Ningxiang, first into Luhua Lake and then into Xiangjiang River.

Staring at the Luhua River beside me, the river surface shrinks in dry season, and the weeping willows on the shore lose the green meaning of "a thousand wind willows". There are several colorful cruise ships in the lake. Girls and boys in "Hanfu" are rowing, stopping and laughing happily.

Rows of dark wooden boats ran aground on the dry beach on the other side. It used to be the water battlefield where Zeng Guofan led the Xiang army to fight the Taiping rebels, but now the three-story warship left behind is said to be the command ship of Zeng Guofan, the commander-in-chief of the Xiang army, who trained the water army. In the vicissitudes of life, it left rust and rags, and it was unable to make a difference in the water. You can only lie quietly on the beach, let the wind blow, let the sun shine and let the rain fall. It makes people think about its prestige in the past.

A generation of military advisers, Xiang and Zeng Guofan chose this good port to station troops here, practice the water army and fight abroad. Although it failed many times, the final victory still belonged to the bitter Xiang army, thus gaining the reputation of "no army without Xiang".

A 02 1 missile speedboat, which served in the South China Sea Fleet, was also moored beside the Lujiang River to provide people with national defense education.

Jinggang, with convenient waterway, is the only place where Dongting Lake passes through Xiangjiang River to Changsha. In the era when only water transportation was available, there were thousands of ships and businessmen thriving here. The boating culture at that time promoted the development of Jinggang, and there are still well-preserved brothels, stages, casinos and religious temples, which witnessed the prosperity of "Little Hankou" in that year.

During the Great Revolution, Liu Chouxi's one-armed general was born here, and the revolutionary mother Tao Chenggong was born here. Underground Hunan provincial party Committee organs used to work here. Mao Zedong, Guo Liang and many other members of Xinmin Society left their footprints here when they were young.

"One-armed General" Liu Chouxi (1897- 1935)

My thoughts were interrupted by my classmates' greetings, and a team of walking on stilts and dancing dragon lanterns came. The sonorous gongs and drums make half the street lively.

We got up and walked behind the busy team. Unconsciously, we came to an inconspicuous small handicraft workshop. An old man who looks nearly 80 years old is concentrating on polishing his work-Xiao Mu steelyard. I asked the master what your name is and how old you are this year. "You made such a small scale in this place. Does anyone buy it? " How's business? "

He looked up and saw someone chatting him up. He is very happy. He took off his reading glasses and said to us, "The Xiao Mu scale I made is an antique now. It is basically invisible in the market. Only some old people in some pharmacies still use these 16 binary Xiao Mu scales. Usually some collectors come to buy scales. "

According to the conversation, the 82-year-old Master Lu is the third generation descendant of this craft. He has three sons, none of whom is willing to inherit this craft. It seems that this unique skill will be over by the time he reaches it. That's a real pity.

At this time, a Jiangxi cousin entered the store to choose a scale. Her mother is a "good handle" and wears reading glasses in her sixties. She took out four small scales weighing 500g from the cupboard, carefully touched the scales with her hands, looked at whether the silver dots embedded in the wooden poles were round and smooth, wiped the copper plates, checked the accuracy of the wooden scales with standard weights, and chose two of them. After bargaining with the old man. She said it was a gift for her father, who had been a pharmacist all her life, as a gift for his 90th birthday.

Seeing off the customer, the old man was very happy, saying that he met the "God of Wealth" today, went back to the store, sipped two cups of tea, and went to play with the baby again. I have watched this scene for a long time, so I envy it!

Now all weighing instruments are decimal, from wooden scales to scales and electronic scales, and there is no old scale of 16. I remember when I was a child, wooden scales were widely used in rural areas. The scales are all 16. When I was about to graduate from primary school, the village chief's father saw that I was the only literate of the three brothers and asked me to recite the formula of "seeking two catties".

I remember one night, I recited the formula of "two Jin" under the gloomy oil lamp. My stern father stood by me and said, "Remember these formulas, and I can be an accountant when I grow up." He put three fingers on my head, making me feel as if he was going to hit someone. He said: "I have a bad back, my back is incomplete, so be careful not to sleep." I have to recite the formula of "one retreat, 625,2125,31875,425,53125" ... 16 1 kg "over and over again. Because it is a boy's work, I still remember to understand it thoroughly.

Walk out of the old craftsman's weighing shop and cross a stone arch bridge to the east. The running water under the bridge walked slowly like an old man. We go upstream along the stream, and not far away is the Meteorite Museum founded by Mr. Zhao Yiguang, a native of Chenzhou, from June 5438 to October 2009.

The whole exhibition hall is divided into two floors, covering an area of more than 800 square meters. In the exhibition hall on the first floor, spherical, thorny, Mercedes-Benz, rooster and dead tree meteorites are placed in order, and their labels indicate their respective components, such as iron meteorites, stone meteorites, mercury meteorites, iron-nickel meteorites, boron-manganese meteorites, silicon-phosphorus meteorites, polymetallic meteorites and so on. They formed almost at the same time as the sun planets, and their arrival provided rich cosmic information for human beings, which helped to uncover the mystery of the formation of the solar system and the origin of human life.

Meteorites are hard to come by, and it is even more difficult to collect them. Without strong economic strength, this is conceivable and impossible. According to reports, the auction price of a moon meteorite weighing 1 g is 1 10,000 US dollars, and a Martian meteorite weighing 0.28 gram sold for a high price of 7333 US dollars. Some people say that the most precious thing in the world today is not gold, diamonds or sapphires embedded in the queen's crown, but "whispering" meteorites that are not beautiful at all from the outside.

I think this fellow villager in Chenzhou must be a billionaire, otherwise he could not have done such a useful thing, and I admire his kindness. Xiao Xia, the lecturer in the exhibition hall, is a warm girl. She took me to see every meteorite, introduced these treasures and took pictures of me.

China is a country with many meteorites falling. I remember 1976 that there was a meteorite shower in Jilin, and three huge meteorites fell. It was in that year that three important founding leaders of our country died one after another. Is it a natural coincidence, or is it unknown that God is accepting human immortals, which makes us have infinite reverie.

From "Xiaohankou" ancient town to 4A famous tourist town, Jinggang ancient town has come from history, and its heavy historical accumulation has endowed it with modern color. It is a bright pearl on the edge of Xiangjiang River. I have visited her more than once, and I will visit her many times in the future.

* Photography/Zhang Yeheng

The author of this article is Zhang Yeheng.

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* This article is exclusively published by CityMemory, written by | Zhang Yeheng, edited by | Mingming, part of the map source network.