When I came home for the New Year, I overheard an old man talking about a place called Luojiawan near my hometown. It is said that the villagers there are all Hakkas, and everyone can speak authentic Hakka dialect. Check the map, it's only 20 kilometers from my home. So I made an appointment with my friend and set off on a motorcycle. But the journey of exploration is far more difficult than expected. Although it is only 20 kilometers, it needs to climb a mountain. The steep mountain road is almost difficult to ride. But now that we have set out, we can only stick to it. After inquiring all the way, three or four hours later, I finally saw this Hakka village hidden in the mountains.
After several years, the Qinling Mountains became warmer and warmer, and the spring water gurgled. We walked around the village. Under the slow pace of life, the villagers lived in peace, occasionally smelling a bird song and finding one or two furry mice. There is no language barrier in imagination. We pretend to be guests here and eavesdrop on villagers' conversations in twos and threes. The old man called his grandson home for dinner, and the farmers talked about crops and drove away scattered chickens. The language is no different from our village. The villagers' Shangluo dialect makes me feel that I am in the wrong place. The buildings here are basically similar to those in the local area, but they are slightly dilapidated because of traffic jams. Most of the houses are still adobe houses with blue tiles, and there are two-story adobe buildings that I have never seen before.
We asked an uncle holding a child by the roadside and learned that this is indeed a Hakka village called Luo. Old people and children in the village can speak Hakka. Uncle Luo recommended his uncle, Mr Luo Taihua.
Mr. Luo's home is just below the Roche ancestral hall. Two old people in the family have a dozen chickens and a lively puppy. Grandma Luo is drying chicken manure as fertilizer in the yard. Grandma Luo was very enthusiastic about our arrival, and quickly called us to sit down and drink water, and called Teacher Luo who was working in the field. Mr. Luo Lao is not a pedant with gray hair and reading glasses. He came towards us covered in mud. He is thin, strong and full of energy. Knowing the purpose of our visit, the old man told us the story of Luojiawan.
In ancient times, some Hakka ancestors once lived in Shaanxi, Henan and Zhejiang, and only moved to Fujian and Guangdong in the Ming Dynasty. During the Qianlong period, perhaps because of the war, Luo, the ancestor of Roche, carried the remains of his father Luo from Luo Chang County, Meizhou, Guangdong Province (now Wuhua County) to Luojiawan, where his mother died, and settled here (the old people in the village called it "Niubei", which means the safest place). Luo was buried here, and the grave still exists today. Luo has four sons, who cultivated the land in the virgin forest in the deep mountains and thrived, from a few at the beginning to more than 400 at the peak. Now many villagers have moved out of this ditch because it is closed. There are about 60 or 70 families in Luojiawan, with 200 or 300 people. According to the old gentleman, whether they can speak Hakka here is the standard of Hakka. According to this standard, there are 24 Hakkas in Shangluo area. In addition to Luo in Luojiawan, there are Zhong in Yanping Village, Chen in Mizoguchi Village, Liu in Liucun Village and Wu (from Fujian) in Tieluzi Village nearby. Farther away, there is a surname of Huang in the mouth of the town temple ditch, and Yueping in the town of Beikuanping. In the past, Hakkas had the custom of not marrying local residents. Luo, Huang, Chen and Zhong are old relatives. The old man said that Hakkas are strong and upright. Since ancient times, there has been a saying in the bay that "the sky is not afraid, the earth is not afraid, and the water is in the ditch (where Luojiawan is located)". Roche's ancestors also educated their descendants to "eat wisdom with wisdom, work with wisdom, endure without doubt, and do nothing harmful to nature." No one has been punished since the liberation of the Gulf. At the same time, Luo Jia banned gambling. During the Republic of China, Gu Shizhen led troops to gamble in the Bay in Yangyuhe Town, Shang County, and was driven away by Qi Li, a Bay native, who made his own spears and other weapons to fight against it.
Luojiawan people have a strong sense of clan, and they have a genealogy of Roche (unfortunately, they can't see it because their genealogy is in other places), so they built the ancestral hall of Roche. Last year, people in Luojiawan built an old ancestral temple.
Luo people go to the ancestral temple to worship during the Chinese New Year, and shoot guns on the first day of the New Year to commemorate it. In the past, newlyweds also paid homage here. Before the bride gets married, she comes to worship her ancestors, and during the Qingming Festival and after giving birth to her children, she shoots a gun in front of the ancestral temple to commemorate her. After the death of Wanli, the deceased will be parked in the ancestral hall, and relatives will wake him in the ancestral hall. In the first three years after the death of relatives, relatives should put a pair of chopsticks and a glass of wine on the table, read their surnames and tell them to eat and drink.
Mr. Luo Lao recalled that in 1992, Shaanxi Hakka Friendship Association visited here, and they knew they were Hakkas for the first time. In the past, they only knew that their ancestors came from Guangdong. After being reported by the media, people from Hakka communities in Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong visited here in succession, and invited Mr. Luo Taihua to attend relevant meetings. Teachers of Chinese language and literature in Shaanxi Normal University often visit Mr. Luo Lao.
Speaking of life, the old man said that there are not many unique living habits that have been preserved, but the Chinese New Year is more particular. As the saying goes, "it is better to be poor for one year than for one day." After Laba, Bay people gradually bought all kinds of new year's goods, drank oil tea and smashed rice with a hammer-this is delicious! Due to the change of time, most other customs have been assimilated by the aborigines. In the past, the habit of planting rice and eating rice, four rivers in Gai Lou and tying flower drums in the bay is no longer going on. In the past, people in the bay went to the fields after the fifteenth day, and they couldn't help but start work after the sixth day of the fifth lunar month. This year's lanterns have not been played, and the taste of the year is much lighter than before. Asked about the income of the villagers, the old man sighed: "Most young people have gone out to work, leaving only the youngest and youngest in the bay." The old man's helpless sigh is also the ruin of rural areas in China. The cement road over the mountains has been built for four or five years, but its twists and turns still make foreigners shudder. Most of the children in the village went over the mountain to study at Coca-Cola Hope Primary School. Because the mountain road is difficult to walk, most of them rent houses around the school and leave an adult to take care of them. Mr. Luo Lao then took us to visit the Roche Ancestral Hall. Simple layout: drums, benches, square tables and spirit tablets are all objects, which are simple and solemn. Perhaps this is the character portrayal of Luojiawan people.
Seeing that it was getting late, I thought the mountain road was difficult to walk. After taking a photo with the old man, we declined the proposal of staying overnight and left Luojiawan in the twilight.