In fact, I have never understood the meaning of those neat articles.
Like a cut cake, each piece is the same size.
But those things in memory are not like that. They are in fragments, irregular in shape, and even have some rough edges.
For example, when grandma is cutting flowers.
She didn't mention "paper cutting", but said the word "cut flower". The latter has a wonderful meaning. The single word "hinge" seems to be accompanied by the clicking sound made when the scissors and colored paper are tightly closed and bite. The sound is crisp and coherent. She did not start drawing the pattern template, but directly picked up the old scissors with her bare hands and began to operate. The red paper continued to rotate and change positions in her hands, as if it had the agile posture of a living creature.
I lay on the edge of the bed, looked at it, and asked her what she was doing.
She said, look.
Why does Wu Gang keep cutting down trees?
According to the content described in the textbook, Wu Gang carried out the act of cutting down the osmanthus tree. When he just cut it, the osmanthus tree would grow taller by one cut, so that he would keep cutting it down forever. At that time, I thought this person was really stupid. Isn't this a waste of energy?
Later, grandma said that stupid people will have unexpected blessings. If he really cuts it off, then the moon will be completely bare.
Suddenly I had the feeling that this story might not be about punishment, but about companionship. The sweet-scented osmanthus tree always accompanies him, and the high moon always accompanies him. Through those long thousands of years, he will no longer feel lonely.
Grandma can't read, but she understands this.
Just like the flowers she cut out, the word "福" needs to be pasted upside down, because it expresses the meaning of "blessing has arrived". The word "arrive" has the breath of life and a warm body feeling. It's not that cold verb in the dictionary.
The tea is cold, I'll heat it up for you
One year in the first month of the year, there were guests at home, and my mother was busy making tea.
My father came back from a business trip and brought back tea. The packaging was pretty, but the taste after brewing was very bland. After the guests left, my mother whispered, what kind of tea is this? It’s not as delicious as the wild tea we picked ourselves.
I suddenly remembered the old tea tree in my grandma’s yard when I was a kid.
Grandma put the picked leaves in a large iron pot and stir-fried them with her hands without fear of burning them. The tea, curled up into a ball, didn't look good and was dark. But when you wash it down with boiling water, a burst of bean aroma explodes and fills the whole room.
Grandma said, the tea is cold, I will heat it for you.
She took an old-style enamel jar, poured the tea that had cooled and lost its heat into a large black pot on the stove, and simmered it through water. That unique taste can no longer be tasted today.
Sometimes I think where is the tea that we have thrown away.
Where are the dragon dancers?
I went back to the village during the Lantern Festival last year and wanted to see the dragon dance.
The result was a deserted situation. Two inflated plastic dragons were hung at the entrance of the village committee. They were connected to a power source to make them inflate, and their shape was shaky, like two monsters that had overeated to the point of being full.
It wasn't like this when I was a kid.
At that time, dragons were made of bamboo strips, pasted with paper, and then painted with scales. It is section by section, at least nine sections. The person who dances the dragon head is Uncle Erzhuang, the strongest in the village. His upper body is bare, exposing his bronze skin. When the gongs and drums sound, the dragon comes to life, shaking its head and head, as if it is really about to fly into the sky.
I ran after him, and one of my shoes ran away, but I didn't dare to stop and pick it up.
Uncle Erzhuang is currently laying steel bars at a construction site in the city. I heard that I can’t come back more than once a year.
Where's the dragon?
The dragon is also old.
I saw a shadow puppet show once.
At the temple fair, the stage was very crudely set up, with a dim light shining behind the white cloth. The fingers of the old man who controlled the shadow puppets had been deformed, but the shadow puppets in his hands were as if they had been cast by a spell.
Mu Guiying appeared with a spear in hand, and everyone in the audience applauded.
The silk threads hold the hands and feet of the shadow puppet one by one, and the up and down silk threads make the shadow puppet figures used to perform folk art show changes in expressions of joy, anger, sorrow and joy. I hurried to the backstage to take a look, and saw an old man smiling at me, and the operation in his hands did not stop. Next to the old man sat his grandson. The grandson was focusing on playing with his mobile phone with his head down, without even raising his head.
Mu Guiying on the white cloth is still fighting, but in the world outside the white cloth, the fighting is even more intense.
I'm a little sad.
I don't know who to blame.
The Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses don’t speak
I went to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors and Horses, and there were huge crowds of people.
Everyone was holding mobile phones and cameras, making click-click sounds and flashing lights. Those khaki-colored figurines are standing in a standing posture for more than two thousand years. Some of the expressions on their faces were serious, some were peaceful, and some even had a slight smile.
The tour guide held a small loudspeaker and shouted, these are general figurines, these are warrior figurines, these are kneeling shooter figurines...
But they are more than just figurines.
They were once living people, with parents, wives and children, and a home they wanted to return to but could not.
"History is a pile of ashes, but deep within the ashes there is residual warmth."
That residual warmth, after a thousand years, still burned me.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the flowers my grandma cut.
A fat baby holding a big carp, with peonies and magpies next to it. She said that this situation is called "abundant wealth" and "overjoyed".
She does not know the so-called "cultural inheritance", but she only knows that she must have hope in life. And those patterns cut out of red paper are the hope she has.
Once, I bought her a set of hardcover paper-cut albums, which were beautifully printed and elegantly bound. After flipping through it, she put it aside. She said, what's the point of this? It can't be attached to the window. When the sun shines over, you can't see the shadow.
yes.
The actual paper-cutting has to be pasted on the window. The sunlight shines in, and those parts with gaps leave irregular light and shadows on the kang. The breeze blows and the shadows sway.
That's what's alive.
inheritance
This word is so big that people don’t know where to start.
Perhaps, inheritance is not that complicated.
Even if it is during the Chinese New Year, if you write a crooked couplet with your own hands, even if the writing is like a dog crawling, it will still have more charm compared with printing gilded characters.
When making rice dumplings, I specially made a few that would leak rice, and then said with a smile, these are for you, the greedy cat, to taste in advance.
The children are told such extremely bland stories, some of which look like the Nian beast, some with images like Chang'e, and some with plots like Wu Gang chopping down a tree, even though the children gradually fall asleep while listening.
Just don’t let those old skills gather dust in the corner.
I just remember that once something is broken, it can never be reconnected.
Many people say that we Chinese people have no faith, but in fact, our faith is our own words and history.
Words fade and history becomes blurred.
But that temperature, as long as there are still people who remember it, will never be cold.
Like grandma's flowers, stuck on the window, red for a lifetime.
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