In southern China, people’s growth and life’s joys and sorrows are almost always accompanied by a river.

——Inscription

1

The river next to the small village in my hometown has always been called Dahe by the villagers. It is said to be a big river, but in fact it is just a section of the main stream of the Guanjiang River. In autumn and winter, when the water is dry, adults can roll up their trouser legs to wade across the river. At the narrowest point, children can just throw a stone and reach the other side; when the flood surges in spring and summer, the widest river It's only about a hundred meters away. I don't know the deepest point. No one has ever measured it during floods. I only remember the floods that jumped out from the countless streams and mountain streams in the upper reaches, carrying with them dead branches and leaves or the wooden door panels of people living near the river. They were galloping and noisy, and the sound they made was like the neighing of countless wild horses, and it was like being extremely sad. The women wailed, crying like a baby who couldn't find the warm embrace of his mother. On flood nights, this sound often keeps people awake.

After the flood, dead branches and leaves hang casually on the trunks of bamboos and ancient willows by the river, or the clumps of delicate red willows on the river beach are pressed almost against the cobblestones. After the flood subsided, the first thing the villagers did was not to see if the rice fields had been invaded. Instead, they went to the river to collect all the dead branches and leaves, tied them into bundles, carried them home, lit stoves, and cooked pigs. Here's some good firewood. God has given it to me, and it would be unreasonable not to take it back.

When I was a child, every year after the flood, we would follow my grandfather to the river to collect dead branches and leaves brought by the flood. The villagers called it "waste wood". I still remember the beginning of a folk song in my hometown that goes like this: "It has gone and come back again, like water splashing waste wood." Later I learned that it was a love song, about a young man and woman who secretly loved each other and were reluctant to part ways. The emotion of giving up every step and looking back. When I was a child, I was so ignorant that I didn't know anything about this. I only knew that when the flood came down, the waves of debris and firewood seemed to be overwhelming. They were pushed by the waves, one after another, ups and downs, which was very spectacular. There were also some thick wooden planks floating in the flood. The young and middle-aged people in the village who were good at swimming and had courage would wear a pair of shorts and bare their upper body. They would jump into the flood and chase the thick wooden planks and use the current to push them to the shore. , can be sold, can be used. Of course, there are risks in intercepting during floods. Along the Guanjiang River, people often die because of this during floods every year. In a village across the river from the small village in my hometown, there was a very good water that was washed downstream under the Shuikou Temple and rolled into a stone cliff and never resurfaced. I heard that his newlywed wife married his brother half a year later.

The floods filled the riverbed completely, and ancient willows and bamboos grew under the river embankment, which formed a significant contrast with the turbulence in the center of the river. It was gentle and gentle, and there seemed to be no visible flow. These large and small inlets are good places for fish to avoid the impact of floods and look for food. Here the villagers spread out a fishing net that can be easily collected, which they call the fishing net. By releasing and retracting, you can catch several large carp, and at worst, there are also small fish such as loach, Sichuan stripe, red wing, and clear water male.

Why were there so many fish in the river next to my hometown village? In spring, the camphor trees have fallen leaves and the floods have not yet risen. In the evening, the villagers install fish traps in the rapid shoals. The next morning, each fish trap is packed with finger-sized fish. The fish are pink and tender. They are so sweet that the villagers call them oily fish larvae. The oily fish are very stupid. As long as the leader swims in a certain direction, the others behind will never turn. Later, after watching TV about salmon and migratory birds migrating thousands of miles, I realized that animals' "nostalgia" is in some ways even worse than that of humans. The genetic memory they inherit will never change and they will always return to their birthplace. To fulfill the mission of passing on to future generations. The kind of oily fish larvae that people in the small villages in my hometown crowd in their fish traps are probably like salmon, which have always been walking the same route back to their birthplace in the season when everything revives. Unfortunately, humans who encountered the primates intercepted and killed them.

For people who don’t know how to move or install fish traps, the only place to experience the abundance of fish in the rivers in their hometown is here.

The autumn wind blows and the autumn grass turns yellow. The big river next to her hometown village reveals her gentle side. Ancient willows and bamboos by the river, red willows, fish strips, yellow vitex strips on the riverbank, and wildly growing Polygonum are quietly enjoying the caress of the autumn sun. Sections of the riverbed, where aquatic plants once swayed and fish frolicked, were slowly exposed, like a shy beauty gradually taking off the dress that covered her beautiful body. The river beach is clear and shallow. The shallowest point is just above the feet, and the deepest point is at most half of an adult's calf. The pebbles under the water are green, yellow, white, black, red, and colorful. Sometimes, when you open a larger stone, you will find a catfish or a horse tail bone, etc., darting towards the depths of the water so fast that you have no time to blink.

The fish jumping happily in the clear and shallow river bed do not know that a murderous conspiracy against them will be carried out on a night when the moon is still bright. That night, dozens of villages along both sides of the river selected hundreds of young adults to sit under a barrage made of special bamboo baskets filled with large pebbles, which were made from whole moso bamboos in the upper reaches of the river. Each basket contains mashed tea bran mixed with quicklime. When the basket was put into the water, they kept shaking it vigorously, and even stirred it with their hands or feet. For a time, the entire river was filled with white foamy lime tea bran water. The fish in the river couldn't stand the choking of the lime tea bran water, so they scurried around, trying hard to find a place where they could escape this disaster.

After a few hours, the fish are tired and most of them are dying. So all the men, women and children from the villages along the river went out to the river to catch fish.

Under the hazy moonlight, flashlights and torches flashed, and most of them were fishing in the dark. People hold their favorite fishing tools in their hands and fish baskets tied to their waists. On the river beach, river bend, or any place on the river bed that they can reach, the Eight Immortals cross the sea and show their magical powers to catch as many fish as possible. Many people simply don't take tools, step on it with bare feet, touch it with their hands, and standing in the water feel like there are fish all around them, and they can be caught easily. Those large and small fish that were choked by the lime tea bran water and unable to swim were slithering around people's feet and were helplessly caught in fish baskets. Facing such powerful humans, the fish appear so weak. The phenomenon of nature bullying the weak by the strong happens every autumn in the rivers of my hometown.

The clever fish swam along the lime tea bran water to the foot of the stone cliff of Shuikou Temple. There is a water rock there that no one has dared to go down to explore until now. Old people often say that there are many big fish that have become sperm hiding there. Perhaps this is a good statement. A fish that can escape a large-scale massacre every year can grow up and be nothing but a spirit. There has been a severe drought for several years. People walking on the road halfway up the Shuikou Temple saw long ripples of fish swimming on the river about a mile long under the Shuikou Temple. Large fish several feet long could be vaguely seen on the bottom of the water. swim. But no one caught fish on this stretch of water. As long as there were footsteps on the river beach, all the big fish swarms suddenly went under the rock cliff and never showed their heads again.

This collective mass killing of fish along the river in my hometown every autumn is called "Nao Pianjiang", which means killing the fish in the entire river without stopping the flow.

At the same time as digging the river, we dug weirs. The weir and ditch that flows through my hometown village is called Longkou Weir. It winds for several kilometers and irrigates thousands of acres of fertile farmland in my hometown village and a dozen villages downstream. There are many fish in the big river, and there are also many fish in Longkou Weir. Most of them are carp, crucian carp, catfish, loach, eel and the like. These fish like to drill holes into the earthen embankments of weirs and ditches, causing water to leak everywhere. Therefore, after the autumn harvest every year, more than a dozen villages must act in unison to cut off the water and build canals, which is called "digging weirs." The weirs were dug to cut off the flow. The weirs and ditches, which were no more than two meters wide at most, were filled with various fish hiding under aquatic plants and in the mud. According to the canal section that each village is responsible for repairing, whoever maintains it will catch the fish in this section. First, the production team organizes a collective arrest, weighs them, and distributes them according to labor force. After that, everyone can go down to the ditch to catch fish, and they can still catch a lot.

So, at that time, every autumn, for several days in the small village of my hometown, every household smelled the fragrance of fish.

二

The Niuwan River flows out from the nine and eighteen bends of Xishan Mountain, flows to this small town called Huangguan, and merges into Guanjiang River.

A river naturally has deep pools and shoals. Near the end of Huangguan, at the foot of Xiaoshi Mountain, there is a large protruding stone by the river, half of which is underwater. People often bathe and swim here. One day, after school, several classmates invited me to swim here. As a newbie, I was hesitant to get into the water. I was a little scared after I got into the water. Things in the world are often like this. The more scared you are, the more trouble you get. I tried my best to swim from the shore to the shallow beach in front. A wooden raft released from the Western Mountains turned in front of me. The waves stirred up caught me off guard and choked me. After a few sips of water, I panicked and forgot to swim with my hands and feet, and was about to be swept under the protruding boulder by the rapid current. The water is deep there and there are whirlpools. Just as I was panicking, another classmate who was good at swimming swam to my side and pulled me. Only then did I regain my composure and hurriedly paddled to the shallows. This shadow made me never dare to swim near this big rock again.

In this river, I fell into the water at least three times. One time when there was a flood, I saw a big branch close to the river bank, so I tried to hook it up with another small branch. Life was difficult at that time, and a big branch could be dried for several days to cook rice and vegetables. I never thought that I would miss the mark and fall into the flood with floating debris. Fortunately, we were in an inlet, so we didn't have to worry. We struggled with our hands and feet and climbed up by grabbing the rocks on the shore. I dare not say anything when I go home for fear of being scolded. After the flood, the road along the river was washed away. To go to school for night study, you had to take a long detour, or climb over the wall of the winery that was washed away by the flood. There was a pool under the wall. It was not very deep, but it was inevitable to fall in and get soaked. As the old saying goes, if you walk too much at night, you will always encounter ghosts. None of our teenage classmates has ever fallen.

At that time, there were many fir trees in Xishan. The cut fir trees were all bundled into rafts and transported from the Niuwan River to the wood storage yard of Huangguan Forestry Station for transshipment. The current of Niuwan River is fast and there are several sections of dangerous shoals. Therefore, only seven fir rows are tied up. Bamboo strips cut from moso bamboo are twisted into rows of hoops and tied together, and a few miscellaneous trees are added between the fir trees and the rows of hoops. Crowbars, the rafts tied up in this way can withstand collisions along the way without falling apart. There are also thick pine logs sawn into sections of about three meters, which are not tied in rows but scattered along the river. Those who support the platoon must have both hands and waist strength, and must be familiar with the sharp bends and dangerous shoals. Even though the platoon is rowing along the current, it also requires experience. Those who relax more need good foot strength and good eyesight. How many pine trees were lowered from the upstream mountains, which places would lead to stranding, and which places might cause sunken wood. They could not fall far behind the pine trees, nor could they be too far ahead and wait in front. To relax the wood, several people often form a team, with appropriate manpower arranged at the front and back. The one holding a hatchet on his waist holds a bamboo pole in his hand; the one holding a bamboo pole holds a hook and halberd. The long pole has a sharp and solid hook mouth at one end, which can be driven into the pine wood to facilitate gathering it.

The lumberyard is located on the river beach where Niuwan River and Guanjiang River meet in the east part of the town. It is a large area with dozens of willow trees growing sparsely. The fir rafts and loose pine sections dragged up from the Niuwan River were measured and coded by forestry station workers, and piled into large piles. After a period of time, they were tied into large wooden rafts, with dozens or even several sheets Ten large wooden rafts were connected end to end and sent down the Guanjiang River to the entire state downstream.

Those bamboo strips tied in rows, especially the unpeeled fir bark on the fir trees, can be peeled off and dried in the sun, but they are good firewood. From 4 to 6 p.m., the place was particularly lively, with rows of fir trees docking one after another, and the bustle of people peeling fir bark seemed a bit crowded. The children in my neighborhood were all older than me. They were armed with sharp cedar peeling knives and their hands and feet were nimble. They peeled off large pieces of cedar bark from the rows, and soon they had a large bundle. Doing this requires quick hands and feet and good eyesight. Some rowers are easy to talk to. If you go up to peel off the bark of a fir tree, they won't chase you away because they don't think you are in the way; During the years when we were at the Niu Wan River, during the discharge season, almost every afternoon after school, the first thing we did was to go to the shallow water of the lumberyard river and join the army of peeling fir bark. Coming home wet is always somewhat rewarding, and it somewhat relieves my parents of the pressure of buying firewood. It is common to be accidentally scratched by a knife, poked by a bamboo strip, or pinched by a slippery fir tree that has untied the hoop. Old injuries are often added to the little hands before they are healed, and there are new bruises on the feet. Cover old bruises. Even so, when I think about it now, I am still more happy than sad, not to mention that we were so young at that time that we didn't know what sadness was.

The floods in Niuwan River are so severe that water often enters the homes of residents near the river. Sometimes the water in their homes is waist deep. Fortunately, there were basically no high-end furniture or precious items in people's homes at that time. When the water receded, the simple items were taken out to dry and continued to be used. One year, the water was very heavy. Outside the dormitory where my mother worked, there was muddy water all over. The dormitory was filled with water, so the neighbors next door had to live together with two families. There is a very beautiful female classmate in our class who happens to be a neighbor. That night, there was no place to sleep, so the adults from the two families discussed letting her sleep in the same bunk with me. Although she was not yet the age where love begins, her male classmates often talked about this beautiful female classmate when they were together. I really have to sleep in the same bed with her, even though we sleep on opposite ends and have separate beds, I feel very awkward and nervous. I didn't dare to turn over all night. Many years later, I met that female classmate. She was now a wife. When I mentioned this past incident, she just smiled and said with a little shock, "Really?" I don't seem to remember much. In this regard, I can only ignore it.

The river of the past will never look back. Things in the past may not need to be remembered so clearly. What is beautiful is what is faint and vague.