The Lotus Rhyme of Qingtang Ji Xianlin There are several acres of clear pond in front of the building. I remember that when I first moved here more than thirty years ago, there seemed to be lotus flowers in the pond. There are still fragments of green leaves and red flowers in my memory. Later, things changed and the years passed, but the pond became "half an acre of square pond opened, the skylight and cloud shadows lingered", and no lotus was seen anymore. I retain a lot of old ideas in my head. Every time I look at the empty pond, I always feel like there is something missing. This doesn't fit my aesthetic sense. If there is a pond, there should be something green, even if it is reeds, it is better than nothing at all. The best and most ideal is of course the lotus. There are simply too many descriptions of lotus flowers in old Chinese poetry. Zhou Dunyi's "The Theory of Love and Lotus" is probably the only one that readers don't know. His famous saying "the fragrance is far away and the clearness is clear" is very popular. It can almost be said that no one in China does not love lotus. But the only thing lacking in the pond in front of our building is lotus. Every time I see or think about it, I always feel that it is a heartache. Someone came from Hubei and brought some lotus seeds from Honghu. The shells were black and extremely hard. It is said that if buried in mud, it will last for thousands of years. Therefore, I used a hammer to break a crack in the lotus seed so that the lotus buds could break out of the shell and not be buried in the mud forever. These are all subjective wishes. Whether the lotus buds can grow or not is a huge unknown. Anyway, I finally did my best and threw five or six cracked lotus seeds into the pond, and then I just resigned myself to fate. In this way, I have one more job every day: go to the pond to see it several times. I always hope in my heart that one day, "the little lotus will show its sharp corners" and green lotus leaves will grow out of the water. However, contrary to expectations, nothing appeared on the water in the first year until the leaves fell in the cool autumn. After the lonely winter, in the second year, the spring water filled the pond, the green willows draped, and the scenery was beautiful. However, there were still no lotus leaves exposed on the water surface that I was looking forward to. At this time, I was completely discouraged, thinking that those few hard-shelled lotus seeds brought from Hubei would probably have no hope of growing lotus flowers due to reasons that could not be explained by humans. My eyes cannot suck the lotus leaves out of the mud. However, in the third year, a miracle suddenly happened. One day, I suddenly discovered that there were several round green leaves growing where I threw the lotus seeds. Although the color was very attractive, they were thin and thin, lying pitifully on the water, like the leaves of a water lotus. Same. And only five or six leaves grew initially. I always think this is a bit too little, and I always wish there were more pieces. So, I looked forward to the stars and the moon, and went to the pond every day to watch. When farmers from outside the school come to harvest aquatic plants, I always ask them to be merciful and not to break the leaves. But after a long summer, the miserable autumn has come to the world again, and there are still only five or six lonely leaves floating in the pond. For me, this has been another slightly promising but ultimately discouraging year. The real miracle occurs in the fourth year. After the harsh winter, the pond is filled with spring water again. When the lotus leaves grow, a large green leaf suddenly grows overnight where the five or six leaves last year were floating. And it seems that the lotus has not stopped moving under the ice in the harsh winter, because it leaves the original Leaves also grew in the center of the pond where the base of the five or six leaves was located farther away. The speed of expansion of the blades and the expansion of the expansion range are astonishingly fast. Within a few days, a large part of the pond was covered with green leaves. Moreover, the leaves that looked like water lotus lying flat on the water surface gathered strength from unknown sources, and some of them actually jumped out of the water and grew into tall lotus leaves. It turns out that I was still hesitant, fearing that the pond would be filled with water lilies instead of real lotuses. In this way, all the doubts in my mind were wiped away; what grew in the pond were truly the descendants of the Honghu lotus. I was overjoyed that the wait for these years was finally not in vain. All things sprout from heaven and earth, and animals, plants and other living things, including humans, are always endowed with an extremely amazing power to survive and an extremely amazing power to expand and spread. This power is so great that it cannot be resisted. If you take the trouble to observe, you will certainly admit this. What is in front of me now is the lotus in the pond in front of my building. Since a few brave leaves jumped out of the water, many more have followed. Overnight, dozens of branches appeared, spreading rapidly. In less than ten days, the lotus leaves had spread to cover half of the pond. Starting from the place where I sow the seed, it will spread to the east, west, north, and south. I have no idea how the lotus moves around in the deep water and mud.
Anyway, judging from the lotus leaves above the water, we have to walk at least half a foot every day to create the situation in front of us.
Of course, just growing lotus leaves is not enough. Lotus flowers came one after another, and according to experts who know lotus flowers, the lotus flowers in the pond in front of my door are different from those in other ponds in Yanyuan. The lotus flowers in other places are light red in color; but the lotus flowers here are not only rich in red, but also have many petals. Each flower can bloom with sixteen double petals, which certainly looks different. These dazzling red lotus flowers stand high above the lotus leaves, posing in the wind, as if they are looking down on everything. When I was young, I read an old poem: "After all, in June, the scenery of West Lake is different from that of the four seasons. The lotus leaves touching the sky are infinitely green, and the lotus flowers reflecting the sun are uniquely red." I love the beauty of his poems and deeply regret not being able to go to Hangzhou West Lake and appreciate it in person. What is now showing in the pond in front of my door is the scene of West Lake. It was I who moved West Lake from Hangzhou to Yanyuan. Isn’t it very satisfying? Mr. Zhou Yiliang, who just moved to Langrun Garden a few years ago, named it "Ji He". I find it very interesting and very grateful. Am I the person who will be passed down as a load? Last year, whenever the summer lotuses were in full bloom, I wandered by the pond at least several times a day, sitting on the rocks and quietly sucking in the fragrance of lotus flowers and lotus leaves. "The forest with noisy cicadas becomes quieter, and the mountains with singing birds become more secluded." I really feel that the surroundings are very quiet. I sat there silently in the silence. What I saw on the water were the green and red manure of lotus flowers. The reflection was reflected in the water. When the wind picked up, a lotus petal fell into the water. It fell from above, but the reflection in the water fell from below. When it finally touched the water, the two merged into one, floating like a boat. There. I once read two lines of poetry in a certain poetry book: "The flowers in the pond fall against the shadows, and the sand birds fly with their voices." The author deeply regrets that the second line is not well-matched. It’s no wonder. How many people can understand a realm like “Flowers on the Pond and Shadows Falling”? At night, our family often sits on the rocks by the pond to enjoy the cool air. One night, the moon in the sky was bright and bright, shining a piece of silver light on the lotus. Suddenly I heard a thump. It was my little white Persian cat Maomao who jumped into the water. She probably thought there was a white jade plate in the water and wanted to jump in and catch it. As soon as she entered the water, she probably felt something was wrong, so she hurriedly returned to the shore and smashed the moon's reflection into pieces. It took a long time for her to regain her original shape. This summer, the weather is extremely hot and muggy, but the lotus flowers are in bloom. The green cover held up the sky, and the red flowers reflected the sun, filling the pond, which was not a small one, so full that even the water surface could hardly be seen. A neighbor who loved lotus would happily count the number of lotus flowers every day. Tell me today that there are four or five hundred flowers; tell me tomorrow that there are six or seven hundred flowers. However, although I know that he is meticulous, I don't believe that he can really count the exact number of flowers. I don’t know how much is hidden under the lotus leaves, in the cracks of the stones, in every nook and cranny, but it is difficult to see it from the shore. In the past few days, the weather has suddenly turned cold. Although the lotus leaves in the pond are still green, it seems that it will not be too far away to turn into residual lotus leaves. In a month or two, when the pond water freezes, even the remaining lotus flowers will disappear without a trace. At that time, the lotus will probably hibernate under the ice, dreaming of spring. Their dreams will definitely come true. "Now that winter has arrived, can spring be far behind?" I wish my "Ji He" my best wishes.
"Fu De's Eternal Regret" - Prose by Ji Xianlin
The title was written by Miss Han Xiaohui, so it is called "Fu De". But the article was written willingly, so it is not stereotyped writing.
Why am I willing to write such an article? In a word, the title is well chosen, and it not only really won my heart, but also won my heart first: I have wanted to write something like this for a long time.
I have reached the age of nine. In the past seventy or eighty years, from the countryside to the city; from domestic to foreign countries; from primary school, middle school, university to foreign research institute; from "ambitious to learn" to more than "doing what one wants without going beyond the rules", with many twists and turns, Ups and downs. I walked through Yangguan Avenue and a small single-plank bridge; I passed through "mountains and rivers and there is no way out", and I saw "a village with dark willows and bright flowers". Joy and sorrow go hand in hand, disappointment and hope fly together, I have experienced a lot. When it comes to regrets, they are everywhere. I have to choose the deepest, truest and most unforgettable regret among them, that is, the eternal regret. It is easily accessible because it has never left my heart for a moment.
My eternal regret is: I should not have left my hometown and my mother.
I was born in an extremely poor village in northwest Shandong.
Our family is the poorest of the poor. It can really be said that we are poor without a foothold. During the ten years of catastrophe, I personally stood up against the rebellious but popular "Lafayette" from Peking University. She regarded him as a thorn in her side and wanted to get rid of him quickly. Her minions came to my hometown twice and deliberately "beat" me into a landlord. Their vicious teacher airs did not scare my fellow villagers. One of my childhood friends pointed at their noses and said loudly: "If the whole Guanzhuang family came to complain, Ji Xianlin's family would be the first!"
This sentence is not an exaggeration, he said is the truth. My grandparents died young, leaving my father and three brothers alone and helpless. The youngest uncle gave it away. My father and uncle Jiu were so hungry that they had no choice but to go to other people's jujube groves to pick up dried jujubes that fell on the ground to satisfy their hunger. This is certainly not a long-term solution. In the end, the brothers were forced to leave their hometown and migrate to Jinan to make a living. At this time, they were only in their teens and twenties. In a big city with no friends, Uncle Jiu must have gone through a lot of hardships and settled in Jinan. So my father returned to his hometown and said he was a farmer, but he had no land to cultivate. It must be that after all the hardships, Uncle Jiu sometimes sent some money home from Jinan, and his father relied on it to make a living. Somehow, I found (read Ruoxin) a wife, and she was my mother. My mother’s maiden name is Zhao, and she is from the same family. Her family is almost as poor as ours, otherwise we would never get married. Her family doesn't have enough food to eat, so how can she have the money and time to go to school? So my mother didn't know a word and lived her whole life without even a name. Her house is on another village, five miles away from our village. This five-mile journey was the longest distance my mother had ever walked in her life.
That person at Peking University who "Lafayette" wanted to "beat" into a "landlord", that is, me, was born in such a family and had such a mother.
Later I heard that our family had indeed been "rich" for a while. Around the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Uncle Jiu used the last five cents left in his pocket to buy one-tenth of the Hubei flood lottery tickets in the three northeastern provinces and won the prize. The two brothers discussed that they should "return to their hometown rich and noble", raise their eyebrows and exhale when they go home. So he brought the money home, but Uncle Jiu still stayed in the city. His father took care of everything in the countryside. He bought bricks and tiles at ridiculous prices and built a house. He also bought a field with a well at a ridiculous price. I will be dripping with emotion and feel really proud. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and my father once again used ridiculous and bizarre methods, just like Song Jiang, who was open-minded and generous to entertain friends from all over the world. In the blink of an eye, the tile-roofed house was demolished and sold to sell bricks and tiles. The fields with wells also changed owners. The whole family returned to their original situation. It was at this time and under such circumstances that I was born into the human world.
Of course my mother experienced this huge change firsthand. Unfortunately, when I lived with my mother, I was only a few years old. Tell me, I don't understand. Therefore, our family's sudden rise and sudden decline this time was just like a flash in the pan. I still don't fully understand it. This mystery may become an eternal mystery.
In any case, our family returned to its previous poverty situation. Later, I heard someone say that our family only had more than half an acre of land at that time. I don’t know where this half-acre of land came from. A family of three lives on more than half an acre of land. Of course Uncle Jiu in the city will give him some help, but something like winning the Hubei Flood Disaster Award is not uncommon once in a lifetime. Uncle Jiu didn't have much money to support his brother.
I am too young to tell how life is at home. Anyway, I eat very badly, I understand this. According to the standards at that time, eating "white" (meaning wheat noodles) was the highest, followed by millet noodles or corn flour pancakes, and the third was red sorghum pancakes, which were red in color, like pork liver. "White" has no connection with our family. The "yellow" ones (millet noodles or stick noodle pancakes are all yellow in color) have little affinity with us. The only people who stay with each other all day long are "red ones". This "red" is bitter and astringent, which is really hard to swallow. But if I don’t eat, I feel hungry again. I really feel a little “red”.
However, children also have their own ways. My grandfather's cousin is a civil servant, and I call his wife grandma. This group of them has money and land. Although Juren died, his family's financial situation was still very good. My great-grandmother is still alive.
Her grandson died young, so she poured all her love into me. She is one of the only people in Guanzhuang who can eat "white food". Not only did she eat it herself, but she also left half or a quarter of a white flour steamed bun for me every day. As soon as I open my eyes every morning, I immediately jump off the kang and run to the village. Our family lives outside the village. I ran up to my grandma and shouted crisply and sweetly: "Grandma!" She immediately laughed so hard that she couldn't close her mouth. She retracted her hands into her thick sleeves, took out a small piece of steamed bun from her pocket, and handed it to me. This is the happiest moment of my day
In addition, I can occasionally eat some "white food", which I earned through my own labor. When the wheat harvest season comes in the summer, our family has no wheat to harvest at all. My aunt and uncle from the Ning family who lived across the street—their family was also very poor—took me to "gather wheat" in the fields of rich people in my own village or other villages. The so-called "gleaning" means that after the long-term workers of other families have cut the wheat, there will always be a few ears of wheat left. These are not worth picking, so we poor people come to "glean". Because there will never be much left, we picked it up for a long time, but we only picked up half the basket. However, for us, this is already a treasure. My aunt and uncle must have taken special care of me. Even a four-, five-, or six-year-old child could pick up ten or eight pounds of wheat grains in one summer. These are all made by my mother's own hands. In order to reward me, after the wheat season, my mother would grind the wheat into flour, steam it into steamed buns, or paste it into white flour pancakes to satisfy my craving. So I feasted.
I remember one year, my performance in picking up wheat was perhaps a bit "extraordinary". On the Mid-Autumn Festival - what farmers call "August 15th" - my mother got some moon cakes from somewhere and broke a piece for me. I squatted next to a stone and ate it. At that time, for me, mooncakes were really magical things, even dragon liver and phoenix marrow were incomparable. It was rare for me to eat them once. I didn't notice whether my mother was eating too. Looking back now, she didn't even eat a bite. Not only the mooncakes, but also other "white" ones, my mother had never tasted them and left them all for me to eat. She has probably been associated with red sorghum pancakes her entire life. In the year of harvest, you can’t even eat this, so you have to eat wild vegetables.
As for meat, the memory of eating seems to be blank. Next door to my parents' house is a workshop that sells boiled beef. The old oxen that had worked hard for farmers all their lives were no longer able to plow in their old age, so a few farmers bought them at extremely low prices, killed them in extremely barbaric ways, boiled the meat, and then sold it. Old beef is difficult to cook, and there is really no way to do it. The farmers urinate in the meat pot, so that the meat becomes rotten. Farmers are kind-hearted. When this happens, they tell their neighbors: "Don't buy any meat today!" My mother's family is poor. Although she loves my grandson very much, she can only use earthen jars and spend a few coins to fill a jar. Beef soup, better than nothing. I remember one time, there was an extra piece of beef belly in the jar, which became my patent. I couldn't bear to eat it all at once, so I used a rusty little iron knife to cut it piece by piece and eat it slowly. This piece of tripe is really comparable to mooncakes.
"White", moon cakes and tripe are rare, but what about "yellow"? "Yellow" ones are equally rare. But even though I was only a few years old, I figured it out. In the three seasons of spring, summer and autumn, the grass and crops outside the farm grow. I would go outside the village to cut grass, or go to other people's sorghum fields to split sorghum leaves. Splitting sorghum leaves is not only not forbidden by landowners, but also welcomes it; because once the leaves are split, ventilation can be improved, sorghum can grow better, and more grain can be harvested. Both grass and sorghum leaves are used to feed cattle. Our family was poor and had never raised cattle. My second uncle’s family owns land and often raises two big cows. The grass and sorghum leaves I prepared are for them. Whenever I, a child less than three pieces of tofu tall, walked into the second uncle's door carrying a large bundle of grass or sorghum leaves, I would feel confident and not afraid. I would put the grass in the cow pen and not leave. You can always have a "yellow" meal, and you won't be "scrolled" (in our local dialect, it means "scolded") by the second aunt. When it was time to celebrate the New Year, I felt in my heart that in the past year, I had made a contribution by feeding the cows, and I had the courage to go to the second uncle's house and eat yellow noodle cakes. Yellow noodle cake is steamed with yellow rice noodles and dates. Although yellow in color, it ranks higher than "white". Because it is only eaten once a year during the New Year, and things are rare, yellow noodle cakes have become more expensive.
What I talked about above was all about food. Why do we talk about food when we talk about mother? The reason is not complicated. First, as a child I tended to care about what I ate. Second, almost all the delicious things I mentioned above have nothing to do with my mother. Except for the "yellow" ones, she has nothing to do with them. I only stayed with her until I was six years old. After that, I went home twice for funerals and the time I stayed was also very short. Now that I recall, even my mother's face was blurry, without a clear outline. There is one thing in particular that is difficult for me to understand but easy to understand: I can't recall my mother's smile no matter what. It seems that she has never smiled in her life. Her family is poor, her son is far away, she has suffered so much, where does her smile come from? One time I went home and heard Aunt Ning from across the street tell me: "Your mother often said: 'If I had known that he would never come back after being sent away, I would never let him go no matter what!'" This short sentence contained a lot of meaning. How bitter and sad! The mother didn't know how many days and nights she spent looking into the distance, hoping that her son would come back! However, this son never returned until his mother left this world.
Regarding this situation, I was confused at first and did not understand it deeply. When I entered high school, I was a few years older and gradually understood. But I was dependent on others, unable to be financially independent, and had all my ambitions, but I could not realize them. I secretly made up my mind and made a vow: once I graduate from college, I find a job, and I will immediately adopt my mother. However, before I graduated from college, my mother Just left me and left, forever and ever. The ancients said: "The tree wants to be quiet but the wind does not stop; the child wants to be nourished but cannot be kissed." These words apply to me. I can't bear to imagine a mother missing her beloved son on her deathbed; just thinking about it makes my heart burst into tears and my eyes fill with tears. When I rushed back to Jinan from Peiping, and then back to Qingping from Jinan for the funeral, I saw my mother's coffin and the simple house. I really wanted to hit my head on the coffin and die with my mother underground. I regret, I really regret, I should never have left my mother. No matter what reputation, status, happiness, or honor in the world, nothing can compare to staying by your mother's side, even if she doesn't know a word, even if she eats "red" all day long.
This is my "eternal regret".