When it comes to Guanxiaoqiu, we can't help but talk about the Yellow River. The Yellow River flows through closed hills for about 50 or 60 kilometers, accounting for only 1% of the total length of the Yellow River, but it is this 1% length that has brought us extreme pain. China people affectionately call the Yellow River the Mother River, but this mother is moody and violent here. As far as I know, from the pre-Qin period to about 3000 years before liberation, the burst floods in the lower reaches of the Yellow River reached an astonishing 1593 times, with an average of two bursts and 26 major diversions in three years. Fengqiu is also often thrown by this mother on the south and north banks. The whole area of Fengqiu is the riverbed of the Yellow River. Huangteng River washed away large fields, houses, grains and roads with rolling sediment. This rolling yellow water brings sand mountains and patches of saline-alkali land, as well as endless miasma and plague. But people here have never lost hope. The house was washed down and rebuilt, the grain was washed away and planted next year, and the road was washed away and rebuilt immediately. Day after day, year after year, hardworking villagers spent a hard time in destruction and reconstruction. Although it has been turned upside down, the only constant is the hope for tomorrow. After liberation, the Yellow River was bound by a newly built levee, and the river course could no longer swing from north to south casually. My hometown was never invaded by the Yellow River. However, because the Yellow River carries a lot of sediment into the sea every year, there are about 400 million tons of sediment in the downstream, which makes the downstream riverbed rise year by year, forming a world-famous "hanging river" wonder on the ground. At present, the riverbed in the lower reaches of the Yellow River is generally three to five meters higher than the ground outside the dike, and the Cao Gang in Fengqiu, Henan Province, my hometown is as high as 10 meter, which really makes it how the water of the Yellow River moves to the sky. Since cleaning up the dry ridges, it has become a key project for harnessing the Yellow River. The famous dangerous workers in Cao Gang are located here. If the Yellow River breaches here, it will really be like water from the sky falling into a well. In my hometown, there has always been a folk proverb, "When the Yellow River collapses, it will rush to Beijing in one day." Although the Yellow River has brought great disaster to Fengqiu, everyone in Fengqiu will still be proud of the Yellow River. It is the Yellow River that gives us the courage to fight against difficulties, and it is the Yellow River that gives us the strength to fight against fate. After many vicissitudes, Fengqiu people are still alive, which is the best proof.
Once the Yellow River burst, it also brought a pearl to the land of Fengqiu in Cao Gang-Qinglong Lake (that is, a lake commonly known as "Tang Huo" by local people. These two words are dialects, but I don't know what they are and what they mean, but I just keep hearing people call them that). This is a young lake, just a relic left by the breach of the Yellow River in the twenty years of Qing Qianlong. Qinglong Lake and the Yellow River are separated by a levee, and the bottom is connected. It is the largest natural lake in the lower reaches of the Yellow River and has never dried up for more than 200 years. /kloc-More than 0/000 mu of water is elegant, deep blue and long and narrow from north to south, hence the name Qinglong Lake. Here, the lotus leaves are green, the grass is green and the lake is calm. It is the paradise I yearned for when I was a child. There are wild reeds and cattails around the lake, scattered and dense. All kinds of fish swim happily in the lake, with occasional waterfowl and wild ducks. Sing in the reeds and play in the water. People have never disturbed its peace for hundreds of years. When you come here, you will be quiet unconsciously, and you will never hear any sound except the voice of nature. It has not been developed until now. It's really a fairyland for self-cultivation
After passing Qinglong Lake, drive two or three kilometers to the northeast, and you will reach Ji Qinghe, one of the cradles of Henan Opera. In those days, the famous Xumen class in Liyuan was located here. Ji Qinghe Village is the birthplace of Hunan Opera. As early as Guangxu, there were eight classes in Xiangfu tune, mainly Xumen. Chang Xiangyu, Chen Suzhen and Cui Lantian, famous modern Henan opera actors, all studied drama in Xumen class in Qinghe. Xumen Keban has an important influence on the development history of Henan Opera and once played an important role. Since modern times, many Fengqiu Henan opera actors have shined brilliantly on the opera stage, and they are widely sought after and loved by the masses. Famous artists are Yan, Yan, Yan, Yan, Yan, and Yan. From before liberation to now, they have made indelible contributions to the cause of Henan Opera. Recently, Henan Opera Broadcasting will hold a special program "Walking into Fengqiu" to commemorate and commend the contributions made by many Fengqiu actors to Henan Opera.
Having said that, let's talk about the history of my hometown. Fengqiu county was established during the reign of Liu Bang in the Western Han Dynasty. According to legend, in the Chu-Han War, Liu Bang was defeated by Xiang Yu and fled, passing by Xiang Yan (now the northwest corner of fengqiu county). When he met Zhai Mu, he begged for food, and Zhai Mu gave her a meal. After Liu Bang proclaimed himself emperor, he did not forget to repay Zhai's kindness in increasing grain. However, Zhai's mother had passed away at this time, and Liu Bang decided to settle in fengqiu county, where Zhai's mother was buried. This is the origin of fengqiu county's name.
If earlier, the recorded history of our hometown can be traced back to the Xia and Shang Dynasties, when Fengqiu was still a small vassal state in the Xia Dynasty. According to historical records, the descendants of Emperor Yan are famous and used to be the teacher of the Yellow Emperor. In the Xia Dynasty, Feng Ju's descendants were sealed to the father (now Fengqiu West) and became vassal states. Later generations once called him father, but he was actually named after a place name. The Zhou Dynasty sealed the death of his father's country, and its people were divided into two surnames, one with his father's surname and the other with his surname, which were handed down from generation to generation. Therefore, Fengqiu is the origin of surnames, and many modern people who seek roots and ancestors will come to Fengqiu.
In the following time, there was another war here-the war of singing. The Battle of Mingtiao was a turning point at the turn of Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty in China (about16th century BC, or17th century BC). Shang Tang led the army to defeat Xia Jie in Mingtiao (now Fengqiu East, Henan Province). Since then, Shang Tang has created the foundation of the Yin and Shang Dynasties for 500 years. This war is also a classic example in China's history, through the comprehensive application of tactics such as "cutting the product, cutting the enemy, cutting the soldiers and using the house", and finally achieving a quick victory.
With the flow of the long river of history, wonderful stories are constantly being staged here. Let's focus on the Spring and Autumn Period, when the situation changes and the princes compete for hegemony. In 482 BC, Lu Aigong, the king of the State of Lu, and Jin Dinggong, the king of the State of Jin, dated Fu Cha in Huangchi (now southwest of fengqiu county, Henan) and prepared to hold an accession ceremony. Fu Cha was very excited after receiving the notice, because Lu and Jin were old vassal states, and they were quite influential among them. Prince Fu Cha was overjoyed when he received the invitation from these two old vassal states. Fu Cha was eager to improve the status of Wu. He mobilized all available soldiers in the country and set out for Huangchi with unique armor. At this time, Gou Jian, Wu's sworn enemy, learned that Wu's strength was empty, so he secretly assembled 30,000 elite soldiers at the border of wuyue. When Wu Jun's elite was exhausted and Gusu was left with old, weak and beaten soldiers, he attacked and occupied Wu's capital with lightning speed. Fu Cha, the prince of Wu, came back and found that the prince had been killed and the capital occupied, so he had to make peace with Yue. Seeing that Wu still had considerable strength, Yue agreed to Fu Cha's peace. Since then, the balance of power between wuyue and China has changed. In 473 BC, Gou Jian finally defeated Wu, and Fu Cha committed suicide. In this way, Yue wiped away the shame of Wu Xue in one fell swoop. On February 24th, 1995, 1995, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued a set of stamps entitled "The Art of War", the fifth set of which took "Huang Chi Meng Hui" as the theme, and quoted the famous saying in Sun Tzu's Art of War-"A soldier who defeats others without fighting is also a good one." On the day when the stamps were first issued, I excitedly went to fengqiu county Post Office to stamp and made a "field seal".
During the period of hegemony in the Spring and Autumn Period, Fengqiu was not only a battlefield where vassal states fought against each other, but also an earth-shattering and life-and-death love story was staged here. This is the story of "acacia tree" which is widely circulated among the people in our country. At that time, Song Kangwang took a fancy to his roommate Han Ping's wife Shi and forced Han Ping to die. He built a green mausoleum to coerce Shi to yield, but Shi did not immediately jump off the green mausoleum and commit suicide. Xi asked to be buried with her husband after his death, but Song Kangwang not only refused, but also deliberately buried him across the road. However, two catalpa trees soon grew in the two graves, and the two trees intersected, so people called them acacia trees. King Kang of Song ordered the tree to be cut down, and Yuanyang appeared on the tree and instantly turned into a butterfly. The legend of romanticism has been circulating for a long time, which is also the source of China's classical myth and legend "Liang Zhu become a butterfly", more than 1000 years earlier than the story of Liang Zhu become a butterfly. Throughout the ages, many scholars and poets have also written praises for it. Wang Bo wrote in the poem Ode to Spring: "The gossamer branches are empty, and the flowers fall beside the acacia tree." Li Shangyin's poem Yongqing Lingtai says: "Don't let Han fly to other flowers like a butterfly."
Next, we accelerated the pace of historical progress, and came to the late Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, where wars continued and coups were like clouds. In 960 AD, a great play in the history of China is about to begin. Just after the Spring Festival this year, news came from Zhou Zhen (now near Zhengding, Hebei Province) and Dingzhou (now Dingxian, Hebei Province), saying that the northern Han and Liao armies had joined forces to attack the Later Zhou Dynasty, which was very powerful and requested the court to send troops to help. The Zhou Dynasty ordered Zhao Kuangyin to lead his troops to fight in the north. Later, the border crisis proved to be a lie about military intelligence, which only laid the groundwork for future mutiny. On February 3, when the army went to Chen Qiaoyi (now Chenqiao Town, southeast of Fengqiu, Henan Province, when Chen Qiaoyi was still on the south bank of the Yellow River, less than 20 kilometers away from Kaifeng), Zhao Kuangyin launched a mutiny, and the soldiers dressed him in yellow robes, and the people made him emperor. So he immediately led his troops to Li's capital, and then the Duke of Zhou took the position of Zen and acceded to the throne. In this way, the Da Song Dynasty was quietly born without cruel killing and endless bloodshed, and it is rare to establish a powerful dynasty without bloodshed in our history. The title of the country was changed to Song, the Yuan Dynasty was changed to the first year, and the capital was Kaifeng, which created the foundation of the Song Dynasty for more than 300 years. Zhao Kuangyin made China move from chaos to governance and from division to unity. This is that famous "Chen Qiao mutiny" in history. The mutiny in Chen Qiao took place in the land of Fengqiu. Because of its geographical location, fengqiu county was attached to Kaifeng Prefecture in the Northern Song Dynasty, and it was indeed an important place in both capital city. At that time, the north gate of Kaifeng was named after Fengqiu, which was called Fengqiu Gate. At present, there are still relics in Chen Qiaoyi, including a yellow robe and a big hall, as well as a locust tree tied with Mahuai for thousands of years. According to legend, "Ma Tiehuai" is the place where Zhao Kuangyin tied his horse. Unfortunately, this tree died early, leaving only the trunk and some branches. Nevertheless, when people see its thick trunk and vigorous branches, they will still be moved by its extraordinary bearing and heavy sense of vicissitudes.
This history book is being turned page by page by us. It is like a river flowing quietly. Although silent, it keeps flowing forward and never stops. In this way, it has been flowing into our world and into our side. Maybe history will make people feel a little heavy and boring. We need not take history too seriously. As long as we remember what we should remember and forget what we should forget, it is enough to believe that tomorrow will be a new starting point for our lives.
The story is not over yet. I still have something to say about my hometown. Don't worry, this is the most concentrated article I have written recently. I am very interested in telling stories and telling the truth. If no one is listening, I want to tell myself.
I don't know why. Since ancient times, the land in Fengqiu has been barren, wars have continued, officialdom has been dark, and people's livelihood has been depressed. Gao Shi, a frontier poet in the Tang Dynasty, worked as a county magistrate for a short time in Fengqiu (it is said that he is equivalent to the current county public security bureau chief), which is very unsuitable for Fengqiu's life. Gao Shi, who is famous for his lofty ambition of "looking up to the door of the monarch, but unexpectedly taking the first place in the imperial examination", was awarded a humble little official like Wei. Moreover, "it will take a few days to get to the official position" and "Yunshan Road will be poor" made him unable to make great achievements and disappointed. Soon, that is, three years after he arrived in Fengqiu, he left his job because he couldn't stand "bureaucratic jargon" and "flogging Li Shu". In the meantime, he wrote poems such as First Arriving at Guanshan, Guanshan, Guanshan and Climbing the North Tower. Gao Shi's poems have been loved by the world for thousands of years and are still widely circulated today. Because he is the police chief of our county, I also love him and his poems. His famous sentence, "Mochow has no confidant in the road ahead, and there is no gentleman in the world", has been sung through the ages and is inspiring after reading it; There is also his determination and generosity that "the world will pay for the disaster in response to the south mu of land", which makes people sad.
Gao Shi can be printed and gone, "the official travels in Hexi" and "the waves travel between Liang and Song". But I can't "wave my hand and come here" like him, because I was born and raised here, because my roots are still deeply rooted in this land. No matter how barren and closed she is, I will always be a child who grew up drinking her milk. No matter how far I go, I will eventually return to her arms. This is probably the wanderer's feelings for his hometown!
It feels heavy to write here, because there seems to be nothing exciting and relaxing in the history of my hometown. All the stories are so heavy and sad that people can't continue to read them calmly. Let me put it another way. I said something else.
Let's start with the climate here. We have a typical continental monsoon climate in warm regions, with four distinct seasons and suitable hot and cold. This climate has also created some unique hometown specialties. What I want to say most is honeysuckle with origin mark, which is also commonly known as "Erhua". I won't say much about its function. This is a good medicine. Because the climatic conditions in Fengqiu are particularly suitable for planting honeysuckle, the quality of locally produced honeysuckle is quite excellent among similar products. Moreover, honeysuckle has a long history of planting in Fengqiu, and now the planting area is expanding. Fengqiu is well-deserved to be awarded the hometown of honeysuckle. Unexpectedly, the "Erhua", which was originally used to prevent wind, fix sand and improve soil, has become a precious specialty today, which really makes people sigh. I remember when I was a child, someone planted honeysuckle on a large scale and had to hire someone to pick it during the picking season. We primary school students go to help in groups after school, and they give five cents per catty. Smelling the faint fragrance of honeysuckle among plants, I thought that I would have money to spend on pocket money in the future, so not to mention how excited I was at that time. We enjoy everything here like happy butterflies. Now that I have grown up, many things have changed unpredictably, and the good times like this are gone forever.
Speaking of specialties, I also want to talk about the famous food in my hometown. Among them, roast chicken, curly tip, vermicelli and pomegranate have long been household names and widely loved by people. If you have a chance to visit my hometown, don't forget to try these specialties. Although it is not a precious thing, it is the most common part of our life, just like our days, without gorgeous decoration, just passing by.
Here I want to talk about roast chicken, because it is not only a specialty of our hometown, but also a craft handed down from generation to generation in our family. The roast chicken in our family is actually the roast chicken at the crossing, because the elders said that my family moved from Huaxian County to Fengqiu that year. I calculated that it has a history of at least 200 years, because there are hundreds of people in our Zhang family now. Daokou Town used to be an important ferry on the canal. From then on, it can go north to Beijing and Tianjin along the Weihe River, and Huaiyan also went north. Businessmen once gathered here, and it was bustling. It is also for this reason that Daokou roast chicken is famous all over the world. Because of this craft, the descendants of the Zhang family went to various places to make a living, and now they can eat authentic roast chicken in Cangzhou, Hebei Province and Luoyang, Henan Province. After liberation, the production technology of roast chicken was announced to the public, so more people could make roast chicken, and more roast chicken came to people's tables and became people's food. I think this is really the good fortune of roast chicken. But in my opinion, if you want to eat delicious roast chicken, it's better to be authentic. The producer of Daokou roast chicken who claims to be ancestral must be surnamed Zhang, and I can't guarantee that the others are authentic. Because Zhang has been cooking roast chicken for hundreds of years, he has unique experience and methods in production technology, production technology, temperature and so on, which is difficult for others to master for a while. Because the production process of roast chicken is complex, the technical requirements are high, and it takes some time to cook, so people can eat roast chicken with rich flavor, crisp fragrance, soft rot, salty taste, fat but not greasy. The roast chicken cooked by my family, especially the roast chicken cooked by my grandfather, still drools when I think about it. I have been exposed to the production process of roast chicken since I was a child. Although I know how to make it now, the technology and experience are not good enough and the taste is not good enough, so I have to tell you about its making process. When cooking roast chicken, you pay great attention to skills, but its slaughter process is different. Nowadays, many people can't kill chickens (hehe, it may not be necessary now, so we can talk alone if someone wants to learn), but if you use this skill when killing chickens, you can make the chickens not jump or bark, obey and cut a knife on their necks. Only when the chicken is bled, the cooked chicken is delicious. After the chicken is slaughtered, the chicken feathers are removed, the internal organs are pulled out, soaked in clear water, and then the chicken is thoroughly cleaned before it can be shaped. Have you noticed that the shape of roast chicken is very beautiful, unlike other chickens killed, which are thrown into the pot and cooked and fished out without any aesthetic feeling? Need some tools to shape the roast chicken. First cut a few chicken ribs with a knife inside the chest, and then put the chicken wings through the chicken's mouth. At this time, choose a suitable sorghum stalk (this is the most authentic and original roast chicken practice, you must have never heard of it) and put it in the chicken breast. Finally, the two thighs of the chicken are fixed under the chicken breast, so that the beautiful prototype of the roast chicken comes out. After the shape is finished, the chicken should be fried in the oil pan. Before frying, chicken should be coated with honey or syrup to play a role in coloring and flavoring. Of course, the frying process also requires some skills, which is very different from the food we usually fry. The fried chicken is golden in color and very beautiful. Chickens with the same shape are packed together, and people can't help but take a bite. Don't worry, the roast chicken can't be eaten yet. The last step is to cook in a soup pot. Of course, there are eight kinds of spices in the pot: tangerine peel, cinnamon, cardamom, angelica dahurica, clove, Amomum tsao-ko, Amomum villosum and Alpinia officinarum, which is called "Eight Spices" in our family. Moreover, the soup is old soup, and the uniqueness of roast chicken lies in this soup, and the mystery is wonderful. More importantly, if the roast chicken is cooked with firewood, its taste will be more mellow and rich. When my grandfather cooks roast chicken, he boils the pot at night, then puts the fried roast chicken in, covers the pot, cooks it again, then cleans all the firewood in the stove, leaving only some red charcoal, and slowly heats the roast chicken in the pot. When I got up the next morning, I lifted the lid. Wow, that smell is beyond words. You don't have to taste it with your mouth. You just need to smell it. I'm sure your mouth is full of saliva and you'll never forget it. So every morning, this smell fills my yard and the whole street. When I was a child, it was a great happiness to smell this smell every day, not to mention that I could often taste this delicious food. I still feel that I am the happiest person in the world. But what makes me sad is that my dearest grandfather passed away not long ago last year. From then on, I'm afraid I'll never taste this most intimate and familiar delicious food again. Maybe I will never have such a happy moment in my life from now on.
It doesn't matter so much. However, my attachment to my hometown is also based on my incomparable love for home. I think everyone, like me, has a unique feeling in his heart-to his hometown and home.
I hope you can also tell me your love and attachment to your hometown, and I am willing to share it with you.
(The pictures in this article are all from the Internet)