Official roads, streams and canals, in which I spent a lot of time, are now hidden.

At that time, many things were fine. When I leave inadvertently, I will never think of the past years again. When I looked back, I found that what I had hidden had not been discovered, and what I had not hidden had disappeared forever.

Looking back, I count the sights in my eyes in those years: the pine tree standing alone on the top of the mountain, the oldest persimmon tree covered with crimson persimmons at the foot of the mountain, the two simple ash shops standing alone in the field, the low cowshed outside the pond, and so on. I found that the tadpole-shaped artificial canal disappeared, leaving only a stream, which trickled into the Oujiang River day and night. They took advantage of my absence to bury the canal underground, and a short section was still buried under my yard. Official roads, streams and canals are like three parallel lines, and I spent a lot of time in them when I was a child. The stream is at the lowest place, the road is in the middle, the canal is at the top, and then there are terraces, mountains and the blue sky at the top of the mountain. There are white or gray, thick or shallow clouds floating in the sky.

The stream originates from Zhaitouling and is also one of the sources of Oujiang River. The stream is clear and shallow, and the fish swimming among the rocks are clearly visible. There are four weirs coming down from Zhaitouling, and two weirs have rafters. The stream can't pass, and only when the flood floods, piles of pine trees and Chinese fir coming down from the mountain are released, which are huge in rows and are put in groups along the current and then sold to various places outside the mountain.

In ancient times, the small mountain village was the only place from Xuanping to Songyang. This land used to be an official road, embedded with stones, with Xuanping in the north and Songyang in the south. In those years, I walked a lot in the mountains, leaving many footprints on those roads, some barefoot, some wearing broken slippers, some wearing sandals, with light and heavy steps, some deep and shallow. I went back and looked for it. The stone inlaid on the official road was still there. There were weeds on both sides, regardless of the high and low white wildflowers. A few white and green oil winter vegetables were planted in a slightly wider place. When I heard my footsteps, I was suddenly startled. It was a lizard with four thick legs. Before entering the cave, don't forget to look back at me and leave my HongLing tail at the mercy of others. It didn't recognize me and thought I was a guest outside. Several grasshoppers swept up from the grass, stepped on the grass, made a "snapping" sound, and disappeared in an instant without looking back.

The canal is above the highway. The weir dam at the entrance of the old ancestral temple in Dongxi Village intercepted the introduction of stream water and poured cement. Then he turned a corner at the foot of Foge Temple, and then crossed the field along the foot of the mountain, leading all the way to Zhuke and merging into the square pond in front of the old house. Twenty meters below the pond is a rice mill, which uses a hydroelectric generator. During the day, water can generate electricity to rice milling, and at night, the lights in the room are flickering with the sound of the water wheel. The section from Dafangtian to the reservoir is paved with bluestone slabs, on which people, cows and dogs are walking, and there is water under the bluestone slabs. Looking down from Longgang in Qianshan or Longgang in Houshan, this waterway is a tadpole swimming at the foot of the mountain, with its tail at the entrance of Dongxi Village and its head at the end of Zhuke Village. The pond is full of water, the waves are rippling and the scales are shining, just like swimming in a mountain stream. This pond is full of my summer clouds, winter snow, autumn sweet potatoes and spring dreams. The water in the pond awakened lazy chickens and ignorant mountain teenagers who were drilling around the canal.

By the pond, my father had not put down the burden of work, and my grandmother in the house waited early, holding an envelope in her hand, which was written by her son who was a soldier outside. In the evening, under the flickering light, my father told her the contents of the letter, and then replied according to grandma's meaning: everything is fine at home, and food stamps have been received. Take care of yourself and don't miss it. Grandma looked at the photo of her son sent with the letter, studied it carefully and measured whether she was fat or thin with her eyes. The person in the photo is also smiling at a room full of people listening to it. In the air in the same room, the air exhaled by the people in the room also moistens the people in the photo. There is a hidden worry in the photo, which is soaked by water introduced from the depths of the mountains. Everyone is smiling, but their eyes are wet.

The fifth grade of primary school is in Dongxi Village, which is a day school and steamed rice. The road is next to the canal, and the lunch box can float along the canal to the foot of Foge Temple. On the edge of Foge Temple is the forbidden mountain at the junction of the two villages. The trees are high and the forest is deep, and there is a rustling sound at night. Legend has it that the sandman will wander out at night and will panic inexplicably when he arrives at that place. At the foot of Foge Temple, there is a culvert to take the water back to the stream. This is the original position of the water pheasant, leaving only such a section for future generations to daydream about the appearance of the old water pheasant. The stream pushes the wooden wheel, slamming against the stone mortar in the sound of the rushing stream, crushing the rough lines and filling the thin body.

Outside the classroom is the end of the canal. Sitting by the window, whether in the morning or evening, you can see groups of women washing clothes and washing rice by the water. It is foggy, the night is dim, the moving shadow is faint, the sound of smashing clothes and talking is faintly audible, and I am often led by that scene, and my thoughts drift away with that waterway. There are swaying aquatic plants at the bottom of this waterway, and shrimps are hidden near the aquatic plants, which is almost transparent. Snails adsorbed on the channel wall show their heads, and their tentacles carefully explore the swaying dark green aquatic plants. Under the bamboo shed above the sewer at the foot of the mountain, there are many flat, golden and pimpled pumpkins hanging. The water in this canal reached the end of the pond and filled it with water. When generating electricity, there is a deep vortex above the pipeline before entering the turbine, for example, the brother next door bulges his cheeks and blows hard into the suona mouth of the sky. I put in a straw and was immediately caught in a whirlpool of water with unknown depth. That terrible water vortex often appears in my dreams and wakes me up in the middle of the night. I'm afraid of being taken away by the whirlpool accidentally. Other full water fell out of another gap, so the pond didn't need so much water and had to give up. I don't know what the teacher said in class, so I stood up and answered the question with a blank face.

I remember a photo of my mother and my little sister. She was only six or seven years old. She lived with my aunt for three or four years soon after she came back from my aunt's house in Lishui. My mother was photographed by people walking in the street when she was washing clothes at the pier. My mother was half squatting, and my little sister stood obediently with her hands at her side. The background is a waterfall pouring down from this pond, just like a white exercise. Shui Xin, which no one accepts, will be broken and splashed on the rocks in vain.

When I came home, I met a small nail and made an appointment to have dinner together. When I was drunk, I talked about interesting things when I was a child. Speaking of this canal, I think of aluminum lunch boxes floating on it. Everyone else's lunch boxes are covered, and he is the only one who is open. He was knocked over by a small stone and sank to the bottom. He had to take off his clothes and hold his nose and get into the bottom of the water, and his clothes were taken away again. He smiled and picked up a big flower bowl and dried a bowl of rice wine. I also talked to another big brother about the crazy young jujube tree, which was cut down because it was crazy and unlucky. We followed the slightly better eldest brother, took a kitchen knife, cut the golden pumpkin horizontally along the canal, hollowed out the pumpkin seeds and stuck them back.

Brother sang the song of the Flying Tigers in the evening all the way: "The sun in the west is about to set, Weishan Lake is quiet, playing the beloved pipa and singing that touching song." His voice is high-pitched, passionate and calm. Raised his head, bloodshot eyes wide open, no matter from which point of view are very sad.

Counting and counting, we smiled and picked up a big flower bowl and a bowl of rice wine to the bottom. I saw some waves rippling in the eyes of a little nail, swaying like grass, and her eyes were like a pond full of water. As long as there is a gap, it will fall and splash.

Everything has passed, and the wheel of the times is rolling forward. After all, the canal does nothing. It is no longer needed for rice milling, lighting and even irrigation. The joint is sealed, so water can't flow into the canal. It went back to the stream, crossed the lying stones at random, hurried down the weir and dam, followed by the mountain wind and the maple leaves in autumn, flowed to the Oujiang River and merged into the sea. Channels and ponds are short of water, leaving only soil buried day by day. There are no banyan trees by the pond, so cicadas rest in a bamboo forest by the pond and keep barking. The loach at the bottom of the pool is always hidden in the mud. I don't know when all canals were filled with silt, some turned into vegetable fields, some into cement roads, tadpole-shaped ponds turned into homesteads, and landlords built three-story buildings.

I want to see the intersection of the stream and the canal again, and follow the canal in my memory to find some past events. The bottom of the pier goes upstream. In those years, I walked barefoot in shorts on these streams of different sizes, catching fish, crabs and calamus, and ran on the hot stones. Now, these stones have long forgotten me. Maybe they just turned over, or maybe they moved up and down a place and moved a place. After so many years, I don't remember stepping on its feet every day in those years. Now I am used to those leisurely white-haired yellow webbed ducks. Be shy with strangers, my strange feet suddenly hurt and my body wobbled like a demon.

The vortex that once woke me up in the middle of the night is gone, and so are those swaying aquatic plants. The sweet potato that fell to the bottom of the pond when washing clothes in winter, the lead coin that accidentally fell from the pocket into the canal when washing clothes, and the childhood memories and footprints are all underground. Time hides them layer by layer, only my eyes can see them.

About the author: Han Jianfeng, who likes photography and writing, is a member of Zhejiang Photographers Association.