As long as I can remember, in my hometown-Shaoyang County, there has been such a established tradition: all children, no matter where they are, Tomb-Sweeping Day should go back to their hometown to pay homage to their ancestors. Tomb-Sweeping Day is a grand and sacred day in the eyes of fellow villagers at home, which is more lively than Chinese New Year.

in the early 199s, hometown people migrated to big cities with a spring breeze, worked hard, established themselves and settled down. My relatives left their hometown and came to Zhuzhou to engage in clothing business, and the whole family immigrated, and Zhuzhou has become our second hometown. For more than 2 years, my father and younger brother have gone back to hang up every year, and the number of times I have gone back is numbered. Sometimes I always feel that a part of my life is still in my hometown. With the growth of age, this feeling is more intense, like a rural song that presses the cycle key and sings endlessly in my heart.

This year, I took care of things around me early and planned to go back to my hometown with the "big army".

at six o'clock in the morning, we rushed to our long-lost hometown, with a big family and four cars. There are many cars on the expressway, and it is even more congested when you get off the expressway. A car is lying for miles. It was a three-hour drive, but it took more than five hours.

My home is Wufengpu, which is an ancient town with thousands of years. It is located at the intersection of economic corridors of Shaoyang, Hengyang and Yongzhou, and was called "little shanghai" in the old days. Wufengpu is known as the "hometown of blue calico". Blue calico was once sold to the whole country, and now it has been listed as a national intangible cultural heritage. My hometown belongs to hilly area, where red soil hills are developed, and it has a mild monsoon climate in the middle subtropical zone. There are often continuous rainy days and heavy rains. After the rain, red water accumulates all over the low-lying areas, so my hometown has become a "red hill" written by literati.

With the wheel of the times, the way home becomes convenient and strange.

Our village is one kilometer away from Wufengpu Street, and it is called Qilitian. As the name implies, it is named after a large paddy field. When I was a child, I stood at the door of my house and looked at the field, as far as the eye could see. Now, starting from the mouth of the town, I saw rows of modern buildings standing on the paddy field, spreading neatly, and a new street came into being, which was about to arrive at my door.

The group first came to the graveyard. I saw that the mountains were overgrown with weeds and thorns, and there was no room for waste. The men raised their hoes to dig and weed. Father set three sacrifices and rice wine in front of the tomb, lit incense sticks and paper money, and inserted paper flowers in the tomb. We knelt down in turn to worship, and after the ceremony, lit firecrackers.

The camellia trees on the mountain glowed with green light. I was pleasantly surprised to find a childhood delicacy-camellia oleifera abel.. I took it off and put it in my mouth. It was astringent and still smelled like childhood. Every time before and after the Qingming Festival, we village children, like birds, climbed into the tea mountain, climbed over the mountains, opened our eyes wide, climbed branches and searched, took off camellia oleifera abel. and stuffed it directly into the import. Camellia oleifera abel. has fond memories of his childhood. I picked a piece for my nephew to eat, and he chewed it, frowned and hurriedly spit it out.

Our yard is called Songshushan, and there are dozens of families. A road divides the yard in two, and my home is under the road. The houses under the road are all old houses built in the 197s and 198s, with red bricks and black tiles, closed doors and windows all the year round, and swaying in the wind and rain. Mottled walls, broken eaves, cobwebs weaving old windows, and old houses are an incongruous stroke in this era. Several mud embryo houses have completely collapsed, recording the length of time like ruins, and its final mission is to wait for the return of its owner, Tomb-Sweeping Day. Needless to say, the owner of the mud embryo house has already set up a mansion in a bustling city. This pile of yellow mud is just a sustenance, a sign of identity and a stagnation point of roots.

I stood in front of my house, looking at all the familiar and unfamiliar things, and I said to myself, I'm back! I have jumped into the arms of my hometown, and my heart is full of uneasy joy. It's really quiet in the yard. There's no human voice, no chickens and dogs barking, and only firecrackers are heard from the hillside not far away. At noon, I remember that when I was a child, it was the time when the pots and pans rang and the smoke was ethereal, but I couldn't smell the fireworks, and the air smelled of grass and earth. Back in those days, as long as it didn't rain, people of all ages would sit on the stone road in front of my house with rice bowls, and everyone could eat several different flavors in each other's bowls.

My house was built in 1986, with three red brick houses and two floors. At that time, it was the best house in the yard. My father paved the front and back of the house with cement, and built a square pool with bricks in Qianping to raise fish. Several cement columns were built next to the kitchen and a grape trellis was set up. Grapes are ripe and soft, and will not turn purple, which is very sweet. When we were children, we waited for the grapes to ripen like snails under the shelf. In the summer vacation, we stood on tiptoe from time to time and grabbed the grapes and squeezed them.

The stairs outside are covered with moss and weeds, and the first half of the second floor is an open platform for drying crops such as rice and beans. My father works away from home all the year round. During the double-robbing season, my mother takes me to the field to fight grain. My mother picks up the finished rice with a laundry list, stops under the stairs for a moment, and then picks it upstairs. The stairs are steep, more than 6 degrees. Mother put a towel on her shoulder and kept wiping the sweat dripping into her eyes. She clenched her teeth and the muscles on her face twitched, and picked it up step by step.

There are three pigsty behind the house. In the past, two piglets and a sow were raised, and the sow gave birth twice a year. My sow becomes extremely delicate after giving birth, and only eats wild boar grass. My mother says it's a barren moon. That sow used to be an important source of income for my family, and my mother took special care of it. Every year in the early winter, it is the time when the weeds are weak and the sweet potatoes are harvested. The late-month sows make me miserable enough, and pulling pig grass has become my inevitable homework after school. I left my figure on the dam, the pond, the ridge and the orange garden. I am alone, carrying a basket, with my head down, looking for the rare bright green in the yellow weeds. Pulling pig grass has also become the farm work that I do the most in this village.

Looking into the room through the window, my bed and desk are still in their original positions, covered with thick dust. Countless days and nights, I have been sitting on a cane chair reading, writing on my desk, and reciting texts under the covers when it is cold. Whenever I watch us study in the room, my mother's tired face will show a smile. Mother gets up early every day and works in the dark, and rarely lets us work. She wants us to have plenty of time to study and jump out of the farm. She often whispers in our ears that she has little reading and is afraid to travel by car. Mother seldom gets angry and curses. When she was a child, she dropped out of school in anger because she was scolded by her grandfather, and she regretted it. She would never let her children make the same mistake again. Many years later, even if my sister and I were laid off, she was still happy and satisfied because her daughter had been admitted to school.

The back of the house is covered with shrubs, so it is impossible to get close to each other. Two cypress trees stand side by side, their branches and leaves are layered, majestic and vigorous. The two of them look at each other, but they seem to be within reach. Just like our sisters, my sister is married to Jiangsu, and we often use WeChat videos. Although it seems close at hand, it is far away. These two cypress trees were planted by my sister and me when we were young. On that day, my sister picked up some cypress seedlings on the road, and we planted them in the open space behind the house. If we got the treasure, we snickered. We planted a few rows densely, just like transplanting rice, planting a few trees at a time, and the pit was shallow. Later, the saplings died one after another, but fortunately, several trees survived. In my hometown, when the old man died, he needed to decorate the mourning hall with cypress branches. Gradually, several cypress trees were cut down in turn, and finally two were kept.

There is a private plot next to my house. My father dug some bamboo from the mountain and planted it in the ground. When the warm spring breeze blows the earth, bamboo shoots emerge from the soil one after another. It has a beautiful name, called "Spring Girl Bamboo Shoots". Spring girl's bamboo shoots are tender and delicious, and they are deeply loved by people. Seeing them emerge from the ground means that spring has arrived.

Phyllostachys pubescens propagates very fast, and its vine roots spread endlessly in the soil. In a few years, a bamboo forest can be formed. Because no one takes care of it, Phyllostachys pubescens grows in all directions at an alarming rate, and the surrounding roads are gone. There is a well behind my house, which provides domestic water for the whole yard. The sound of "clang clang" of buckets reverberates behind the house from dawn to night. Nowadays, tap water is pumped into every family, and the lifeline connecting wells has also withdrawn from the historical stage. Phyllostachys pubescens crossed the road and got into the back hill next door, turning the shiny hillside into a continuous bamboo forest. At this time, it is the season when bamboo shoots are growing rapidly. I saw some sporadic buds scattered in the bamboo cracks. I was surprised. My aunt came over and said, "At this time, there are no bamboo shoots, which have been pinched away. Some people in the yard next door came before dawn. They can pinch 2 or 3 kilograms in the morning and send them to the street to easily sell them for a good price."

The puddle around the house was filled with sand and leaves, and my father cleaned it with a hoe. I lingered in front of my house, walking gently and measuring every piece of land devoutly. Like a passer-by, I photographed my house, rocking well, pool and bamboo forest and put them in my mobile phone. At the same time, there are also memories and homesickness. I believe that no matter where I am, they will be able to comfort the lingering homesickness.

We haven't opened our house, and we haven't opened it for many years, so there is less and less reason to open it. The lock on the door is rusty, the paint falls off, the wall is mottled, and the precipitation of time is accumulated on the windowsill. The orchids I planted when I was a child are still there, the cactus is still there, and the sedge is still there. Peach trees are flourishing, and the crown grows into a ball. Are peaches picked by stubborn children before they are mature or become a delicacy watched by birds? The grape trellis beside the house has collapsed, and the vines have long since disappeared, leaving some sweet and sour thoughts in my mind.

There is a big pond in the center of the yard, which is pumped for irrigation in dry days. There are several big stones beside the pond embankment, which is where women hammer clothes. Summer is a children's paradise. We jump into the water with a plastic washbasin, touch snails and mussels with our feet, and play with each other in the water. I often forget the time when I play. In the evening, mothers stand on the slope and drag their voices and shout their children's names. Some of them shout and scold, and when they hear the scolding, they wipe their faces one by one and climb up in a hurry, carrying their shoes and running home, with water dripping down their bodies.

My house is located in the back. There are no houses on both sides, but there is a house on one side, but no one lives there. Only Uncle Ande lives in front. The two of them are guarding the home, and their three daughters are married. The son works in Shenzhen. When I pushed the door and went in, Aunt Ender was alone at home. She said that there were no crops in the field now, and all kinds of flue-cured tobacco were planted. Uncle Ender contracted 7 acres and worked in the field every day. At this time, I remembered that when the car drove into the village, I saw that the fields were all covered with plastic films, and I was puzzled at that time. Aunt Ender said that there are only three families and three pairs of old people living under the road. Grandma Hou 'an's son opened a garment processing factory in Shaodong, and took the two old people to live for a week. The two old people quarreled and came back. A few days ago, Grandma Hou 'an fell at home and lay on the ground for more than an hour before she was discovered. She called 12 before being sent to the hospital.

There is a school on the road. I finished primary school in this school for four years. As soon as I heard the class bell in the morning, I grabbed my schoolbag and ran. When I arrived at the classroom, the bell didn't stop. When I was six years old, I took my household registration book to register for the first grade, but the teacher refused to accept it, so I went home and cried. My grandmother later took me there, but it was useless to plead. At that time, there were too many students, depending on age, and then I attended a kindergarten class for one year. This is my alma mater. When I wander outside and see some rural primary schools, I can't help thinking of her. With the passage of time, my memory of reading as a child has gradually faded, and only two teachers have always made me unforgettable. One is the kindergarten teacher, who is a beautiful female teacher with long hair and slim figure. One day, the teacher taught me to write the word "five", but I couldn't write it well. She was very angry and held my hand and said, "You are the only cadre in your family, and you will be a farmer in the future!" The other is Mr. Li, who teaches Chinese. He is a private teacher in our village. He wears thick glasses and there are many circles on the lens. He is the earliest person who comes to school every day. He has been teaching in village primary schools for decades and has never been a regular until he retires. On the first day, Miss Li changed my name. My father named me "You Liang", and Miss Li changed "You" to "You" in my exercise book. Later, I heard that Mr. Li died of lung cancer in the county hospital. That afternoon, the car carrying the body suddenly stalled when passing by the school, and the driver couldn't get it. Some people said that Mr. Li might go back to school to see it. After half an hour, call again and the car will start immediately.

Now there are few children in the countryside, and they are all sent to the town primary school. This village primary school immediately became the memory of our generation, and now it has been renovated and turned into a refrigeration factory.

The road is like a line of time and space, which divides a yard into two centuries. The original appearance of the last century is preserved under the road, and the scene of the emerging countryside in the 21st century is on the road.

there are many billboards along the road. There are several families living on the road, and beautiful new houses have sprung up, and all kinds of high-end cars are parked at the door. Flowers and plants are planted in front of the house, and evergreen trees are trimmed into circles or pagodas, which is a distinctive modern symbol, marking the prosperity and leisure of life. As time goes by, the hometown people who have been sticking to their homeland have captured the numerous business opportunities and entered the fast lane of development together with hard-working hands. Our former vegetable land no longer exists. Instead, it is a large-scale driving school. Opposite the driving school, there are several mechanical processing factories. The former tile factory has been a large brick factory. I heard that the government has approved a large piece of land, and the hillside near the road is about to be leveled, and it is preparing to build a high-end residential area ...

Many old people in the yard have exhausted their lives on the red land that they cherish each other, and they have died one after another. My grandparents also live in Zhuzhou. Wufengpu, now the hometown of our fathers, is also the hometown of our generation. It attracts us like a huge magnet, but our next generation, the next generation, believes that in their eyes, this hometown is not another hometown, and the hometown is naturally Zhuzhou.

this time, the second grandfather also went back to his hometown together. He is 85 years old. He just came out of the hospital a few days ago and resolutely returned to his hometown despite the obstruction of his children. Looking at my second grandfather's weak body, my father was very distressed. He said that the old man would come back every two years. When my second grandfather heard this, he quickly waved his hand and firmly said, no, as long as I can move, I will go back every year! I can understand my second grandfather's feelings. Hometown is the source and root of human life. My hometown is here, but my life is still here.

at three o'clock in the afternoon, the whole family got on the bus and drove back. Looking at the familiar and unfamiliar scenery outside the window, I meditated in my heart, goodbye, red hills, goodbye, my dear hometown!