After the old house in the countryside was demolished, I lost my material memory of my hometown.

One day last year, I suddenly received it. My mother called and said that my hometown is in the village, and the government is encouraging everyone to demolish it, and each household has to subsidize more than 65,438+10, asking me if I want to demolish it. My answer is very simple. I said don't open it yet, stay and have a look. I can't do anything with more than ten thousand dollars in my hand. Finally, the house was temporarily kept, and I went home to have a look last year1February. This old house is like an old man stumbling, standing in the storm.

In recent years, due to my work, my physical distance from home is getting farther and farther, and the frequency and convenience of going home are not as convenient as before, but my thoughts and nostalgia for them are gradually deepening. In my spare time, I always think of everything about the old house. I even clearly remember the texture of every tile, the color of every wall skin, the creaking sound of every door, and even the hoes piled up in the dark corners are particularly clear.

My grandmother, who is still alive, said that the old house has been built in the Qing Dynasty for more than 100 years, but among the generations I know, my grandfather, father and I were born in the old house. After careful calculation, it is indeed 100 years. Now I think my father is thirty years old. That old house witnessed the ups and downs and indomitable past of our family in this mountainous area for nearly a hundred years.

However, a heavy rain last year and some unknown human factors led to the collapse of the kitchen and the house where grandma used to sleep. Looking at the broken tiles and broken rafters, I know that there is no hope of repair. It is also a good choice to let it slowly return to nature in time and sunshine and rain. Maybe I will come back from afar every once in a while to take a picture of him and record his gradual return to the soil. I didn't see his birth, at least I didn't see his disappearance. I hope it can be recorded step by step.

However, at some point this year, this process suddenly became extravagant. I heard my mother say that the village is going to tear down the house and that it will be plowed again, but there is no one in the mountains. What should we plow again? In the end, this shabby old house was dismembered in less than half an hour in the roar of the excavator, the representative of modern industrial civilization. Rafters and rafters are piled on one side, and the tiles full of years are basically not intact and buried in the soil. Even the wall reinforcement inside the earth wall (usually wood is buried inside the wall to increase the stability of the wall) has been pulled out and placed neatly. The whole process is like killing pigs at home when I was a child. My family was in high spirits, and a fat pig was bled, molted and dismembered according to the established procedures in the past 100 years. Finally, which parts are braised, which parts are refined, which parts are reserved, which parts are given away, which parts are eaten these days, and which parts are reserved for the most important people in the family. Everything is so orderly. I didn't see my old house dismembered with my own eyes, but I saw some videos in Tik Tok. Adults, even those who killed pigs together in those years, watched the fence fall down in excitement and cheers.

Around June this year, I went home again and went up to see what the old house looked like after it was demolished. There is basically nothing left except the vicissitudes of loess and those dark tiles on the walls.

At that moment, I suddenly felt empty in my heart, as if many things had been taken away, and at the same moment, my heart seemed to be filled with something. Everything in the past seems to be vivid and particularly clear, even the laughter of the dead old man is so clear.

1990 I was born in this small mountain village in the room where this house collapsed for the first time. It was exactly 30 years from my birth to the complete collapse of this house, and I spent about half of these 30 years here. However, I have spent all the wonderful years here, and I have deep memories and feelings with every inch of land, every stone, every stream, every tree and even every tile here. Therefore, although there is nothing in the old house in the mountains, every time I go back, I will walk around the back of the house, the vegetable garden and the grassy courtyard dam, feeling full of strength.

On July 8, 20 12, 18, a once-in-a-century rainstorm occurred in the whole southern Shaanxi province, resulting in a catastrophic landslide in a mountain village in the next town, with 29 people buried and missing, and the landslide volume was about 400,000 cubic meters. This is a tragedy, and this tragedy has also started the wave of rural immigrants' relocation in the mountainous areas of southern Shaanxi. Subsequently, many new rural houses began to rise on the relatively flat terrain in or near the town.

From that year on, the village that was originally prosperous and full of fireworks began to wither. In the early autumn of the following year, my parents and I moved to a residential settlement about 7 kilometers away from my old house. Since then, I have bid farewell to the mountain village where I have lived for 23 years. But at that time, my grandmother had not moved away, so every time I came home from the provincial capital, I basically went straight back to my old house in the mountains and stayed with my grandmother. At that time, the people who stayed in the village were basically old people who had lived in the village all their lives like grandma. They are unwilling to give up their land and familiar environment. The other is that the new residential area is a building, their daily life habits and so on, all of which are a little difficult for them to adapt to.

On the National Day of 20 14, my brother-in-law also moved my grandmother from the mountainous area to the downstairs of our resettlement site, and then our small branch office was completely out of touch with the old house of our ancestors. I remember the day I moved my grandmother's things away. She packed coal, firewood, some quilts, jars, bowls and even pickles for clothes. If she is not used to it, she plans to come back and continue her life. In addition, I have made plans to pick tea next spring and prepare to live permanently.

After grandma moved out, I would drive to the old house every time I went back, and grandma would let me take her with me. Grandma gets carsick, and the mountain road swings from side to side, which will make him vomit and feel uncomfortable for several days. In severe cases, he needs infusion to recover. Sometimes I don't want to take her up, for fear that my body can't stand it, but she wants to see the old house by herself. I think it's not easy for an old man who has lived in an old house for nearly 60 years to leave without looking, so every time she wants to see it, I try to drive slowly. It takes 40 minutes to walk 7 kilometers.

Later, he was reluctant to go up. Every time he left, he would take something or give something to others, because she knew that she could not come back to live and would not need these things again. When the old house came up several times before it collapsed, she always said to me, "I can't come here if I die." Grandma had a good view of a cemetery for herself a long time ago, and told me when I was still 10 years old that she must be buried in that place when she died. Then she moved away, and she was afraid that we would be too much trouble. She told me several times that after she died, don't bury her alone in other places. She was scared and stressed that she should be buried in a good cemetery near the old house.

My grandmother hasn't been up there since the house collapsed. She probably never thought that the house where she lived for nearly 60 years would collapse in front of her and the dust would return to the earth. Whether she goes or not, it is estimated that the old man will feel uncomfortable, but that kind of discomfort is silent and we can't detect it.

For 23 years, as long as I can remember, everything about me revolved around this old house. Primary school 1-4 years in the primary school in the mountain village, I can't remember clearly what I went to school and what I learned. At that time, when I came home from school, I spent most of my time doing farm work besides doing my homework.

Just after the New Year, the happy days are over. Adults began to burn fertilizer to grow potatoes. We put a potato seed and a handful of organic fertilizer in the pit dug by adults. Organic fertilizer is a mixture of pig manure and corn stalk, which is rich in nutrition and soft in texture and suitable for crop growth and germination.

Peach blossoms began to bloom on the mountain behind the opposite house, but spring has come, so I walked back and forth in the field several times. The surrounding mountains were green and the weather entered warm spring. People began to pick tea on the mountain with tea and lunch, which lasted all day. Although adults are close to home, they don't want to go back and stop their work. As for me, I go home at noon and eat grandma's cooking at home in the morning. If it is near, I will also help pick tea and then go to school. After school in the afternoon, I went directly to the field from school and picked tea with adults until dark. When I got home, the adults began to stir-fry tea, make tea, make tea and so on, while I was doing my homework in the dark corner.

After picking tea, it's almost time to harvest rape. This is my favorite farm work, because I can help my grandmother with farm work in an instant. When the rape is ripe, the sickle is cut off and dried for a few days. Then in a flat place, spread a huge plastic sheet and put the rape in it. At this time, it is time for our children to play. We just need a few rolls and somersaults, and we're done. Grandma sifted out the rapeseed with a sieve and dumped the rapeseed shell. Rape stalks and rape shells left in the field will be burned and left in the field as fertilizer to continue to provide nutrients for the next crop.

After the rape harvest, the work in the field began a new cycle. A lot of water was put in the field, and the adults began to build ridges to store water, ready to find cattle to plow the field. After the basic work in the field is over, they will start asking a few helpers to turn the bare field into a touch of green rice transplanting. After that, I waited for a long time. Every night, I want to see if there is enough water in the ground. Have the water in your field been released by others, and so on. What I remember most is the croaking that can't be quiet, and the pain and itching caused by the short vegetation on the ridge of the field cutting my ankle.

There is a lot of labor and harvest in autumn, but I remember harvesting corn. Not the joy of harvest, but the pain. The corn is so high that I can't be seen walking in the corn field, but the leaves of the corn cut my neck, forehead, and sweat flowed through the wound, and the pain was clear and sensitive. By the time a basket of corn was full, my neck and forehead were already very uncomfortable.

Of course, in addition, there are dried millet, which is moved to the courtyard dam every morning and cleaned up before dark and low tide. This process will last for many days, which makes me impatient and always delays me from playing with other friends.

Autumn is a very good season, but for people living in mountain villages, they are really busy and have a fast pace. People need to take back the mature grain in the field, and at the same time try to sell the surplus things and buy some other necessities. People should reserve food, firewood, coal, etc. before winter comes, and they don't lack anything. I remember that in the season when the maple leaves are red and yellow, I always go to the back hill to cut a lot of firewood. It is used for heating in late autumn and early winter, and it is mostly used for boiling water and smoked bacon when killing pigs.

Before the mountain is closed by heavy snow, we still have to carry the coal home from the mountain, and use the time after school to break up large pieces of coal and let it burn in the stove. As for my memory of winter in my hometown, two things have always impressed me. One is cold. When I was a child, frostbite would grow on my ears, hands and feet every winter, and I was uncomfortable all winter. The other is the smell of coal. At that time, the coal in the village was all natural, which was mined by the villagers themselves from small open-pit coal mines without any industrial treatment, so the smell of coal smoke was very strong. My whole childhood winter was surrounded by these two feelings.

Before the heavy snow comes, grandma will look at neatly packed firewood and a lot of coal and say with a sigh, "Alas, don't worry about it this winter." In fact, winter in mountainous areas is quiet and serene, and people's pace of life is not as urgent as other seasons, catching up with the pace of time and fighting hard battles with the land one after another. Winter is a time for people to relax and rest. When it snowed, people didn't panic. Men began to play cards to keep warm, quietly enjoying the difficult and relaxing days of the year. And women, like grandma, began to accept soles and knit sweaters. , began to buy new year's goods for the younger generation.

Compared with modern people, inner peace comes from money, but mountains give them that kind of relaxation and self-satisfaction. There is food that can't be eaten in a year in the mountains, and the firewood used in winter is stored in the mountains behind the house. There is no hurry on such a day.

In fact, since I was born and moved out of my old house, my nostalgia for this place has increased year by year. As long as I go back to my hometown in southern Shaanxi, I will go there for a walk anyway. Everywhere I go, I am full of memories, and scenes emerge in my mind. Memories of my hometown are written on the fields where I worked, on the wet fields, on the suffocating mountain paths, on the doorsteps of old houses, on old newspapers on the bedroom walls, on swaying oil lamps, and on farm tools soaked with sweat. Now these are buried in the soil with the times, and I can only see a pile of loess when I look around.

I know that not only these physical materials are buried, but also my memories about them and my childhood. It also buried 100 years of passion and hard struggle of our ancestors. Psychologically, I am getting closer and closer to my hometown, but physically, I am really getting farther and farther away from him. After these years of wandering, I have long been used to being content with the status quo, and I have been in my hometown, but I have never felt that kind of nostalgia and dependence.

When I look back on my years, I see the government's policies and the torrent of the times. I wonder if our generation is the last generation of China people with hometown? So, China people who are concerned about "roots" should put homesickness as an important cultural intention and emotion?