ArticleManagerWanjing Village was where I first arrived on a long trip.
70 km from home.
I was seventeen years old.
Ignorant, restless, curious, and not mediocre.
What Wanjing looked like, I had no idea at the time. All I knew was that only Wanjing could save me at that time. Professor Le Tianyu set up the Jiusushan College in Jiusushan and set up an ethnic class in Wanjing Village. Jiuxian Mountain is about ten miles away from Wanjing Village. On Sunday, a few of my classmates and I went to Jiuxian Mountain Academy with a pilgrimage heart. The ethnic class is located at the Wanjing Timber Station, and a large cauldron is set up on the left hand side of the entrance door, and a shed is built, which is the school cafeteria. Outside the wall is a stone road that faces a high mountain. There were no trees, only stones and grass, and it was very steep and very high. To go to Jiusushan College, you can always take this road, after passing Maidi Village, connect the road, walk along the road for five or six miles, pass a fir tree slope, and you can see the vicissitudes of Jiusu Village with black tile mud walls. The college is at the foot of the hill behind the village, and the Shundi Mausoleum is also at the bottom of the mountain behind. If you don’t take the main road, you can also keep copying the small road, crossing the acres of fields, passing through the green mountains, and reaching the college from the east. I’ve walked both paths. Walking the wheat field, crops, bamboo repair, green mountains, and white clouds accompany each other; Walking the path, crops, bamboo repair, green mountains, and white clouds accompany each other, but the road is a stone road, which has a charm of walking in history.
I have not forgotten these, but they have been blurred.
What I remember most is the spring at the head of Wanjing Village.
There is an easy road leading to Ningyuan County at the head of Wanjing Village. On both sides of the road, a row of neem trees is planted. Neem tree is a common tree in Ningyuan, and it can often be seen along the corner of the house, one in the east, one in the west, lonely, making people feel that its suffering is for a reason. The people of Wanjing ingeniously gathered dozens of neem trees and planted them on both sides of the road, and I don’t know what the meaning is. Is Wanjing a bitter place? In my opinion, Wanjing has the same place as other places in Ningyuan, and everyone eats by farming; There are also different places, where the simple road stops abruptly when it reaches the head of Wanjing Village. Wanjing Village stands on a hillside, facing the river to the east, the fields to the north, and mountains to the west and south. The houses in the village are somewhat old, and several streets are wood-paneled houses, smoky fire, black eaves and gray tiles, and heavy pyrotechnics. But this is a good match for the pebbles on the ground, and the pebbles in line after row indicate that it is grounded.
Neem tree. Photo: Footprint: Uncle Liu
At the head of the village, it is not the neem tree that blooms, but the hook-shaped peach tree at the foot of the mountain north of the neem tree.
The road is lined with fields. To the east is a vast field, and the shadow of the courtyard of the Zhou family behind the lone tree at the end can be seen. There are only a few acres of land in the west, leaning against the mountain, and there are wells and ditches on the side of the mountain. At the foot of the mountain, there is a peach tree.
A peach tree is lonely, and when the peach blossoms bloom, no one feels that it is alone.
This is a fiery red peach blossom, which cannot be described as a red tree, but purely a fire. The miscellaneous wood, green bamboo, and wattle strips next to it were colorless foils.
The peach blossoms bloomed, and the light rain came.
The rain in the mountains is soft and soft, seemingly nothing, but you can feel the rain falling on your body.
The grass by the ditch poked out its head, and it was tender green.
The cattle herding man – must be a crop man, with a black moldy bamboo hat, a gown made of palm leaves, and a thin bamboo stick in his arm. The buffalo grazes on the slope of the ditch in front, and the man herding the cattle pulls his throat and sings, “You carry the burden, I lead the horse…” The voice is loud, and the people are oblivious, and the song is in the quiet, like a spring stream.
The spring in Wanjing was awakened by a peach blossom tree.
The peach blossoms withered, and the neem tree took over the mission.
I have seen the blossoms of neem trees. The neem tree is tall, and in winter, the branches are like a head. When flowering, clusters of flowers, from the branches of the bloom to the canopy of the trees, are not missed at all, they are hung with buds and bloom, like a white cloud. At the head of Wanjing Village, dozens of neem trees are the same height and blossom, like a river of stars. The sky is clear, the wind is warm, the frogs are calling, the butterflies are at the bottom of the trees, and the bees are among the branches and flowers. Although the skyline cut by the mountain peaks is everywhere, this neem tree flower makes people feel excited. When the people of Wanjing Village planted these neem trees by hand, they must have their own ideas in their hearts. Although the neem tree is lonely, when it comes together, it is happy.
What made me dazzled were not only the peach blossoms at the foot of the mountain, the neem tree flowers on the roadside, but also the rape flowers in the fields on both sides of the road.
When the neem tree was still like residual snow, the rape flowers in the field raised their small fists of powder.
One spring day, two spring days…
While people lament that the spring sun is getting warmer, the rape flowers in the fields are full of spring charm.
On the empty flower field, no shadow of anyone can be seen.
Yuanshan, Zhoujia’s yard, Xiaguan yard, and Wanjing Village were lifted up by rape flowers and floated up.
The yellow flowers reflect the white clouds in the sky, and these mountains also have a touch of softness.
The rape flower is like a huge brush, sweeping away the nostalgia and haze of life in my heart after leaving home.
However, Wanjing Village has more than just these landscapes, but also beautiful girls and hardworking villagers.
The daughter of a tailor who came barefoot with sandals, Xue’er who picked up the dustpan to the ground with a graceful posture, Jing’er who wore a sweater under a tree wearing redwoods, Uncle Shuntian who was dedicated to striking iron at the door, and the old woman in black who carried a bucket to the well to draw water… Except for the clanking of iron tools, the bay well is quiet like a leaf, a leaf of a mountain.
Wanjing Village was the place I arrived on my first long journey.
Now that it has been many years since it has been gone, the world has changed several times, brilliant in the world, and worldly in glory. How is Wanjing? But I never dared to disturb it, nor did I want to go there to relive old dreams. However, the spring of Wanjing has always warmed me like a ray of sunshine, and I believe that the world is worth it.
It’s nice that I can go to the bay well in the ignorant years.
It’s nice to have a bay well in the world.
【About the author】
Ouyang Xingpeng, a native of Ningyuan, Hunan Province, currently lives in Guangzhou. He used to be the editor-in-chief of “Big Weekend” magazine and “Film Review” magazine, and founded Guangzhou Media Strategy Planning Co., Ltd. in 2014. He has published six anthologies: “In the Name of Loneliness”, “Colorful Shonan”, “A Sojourner’s Guangzhou Reader”, “Two Halves of Life”, “The Realm of Reality”, and “We Dry Feet”.