Text |Liu Jixiong traveled and grew old, and when he was young, all kinds of things flowed with his memories in the quiet river of his heart. The mountain, the tree, the road, those children and relatives who are here or not, interpret the story of the pile, and the old well that nourishes the lives of all families. The old well is located in Miaowan, only a kilometer away from the courtyard of the Liu family in the Lotus Leaf Terrace. Lotus Leaf Terrace originally belonged to the Horse Racing Village, and it was a flood before the Yuan Dynasty. Legend has it that at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there was a Liu family named Anqing Gong who migrated here from Hefeng, Hubei Province, and lived in the wilderness. When the couple excavated the weir pond, they were happy to get a pot of gold and silver, so they built two courtyards in the bay to shade the descendants, and said that the upper and lower courtyards were sealed, and a well was dug in the courtyard. The years are impermanent, and the vicissitudes of time have passed. The upper seal was reduced to ashes due to fire in the forties of the last century;The lower seal where my hometown is located, and when I was at home, there was only an old wooden house left. But the old well sat as before, with its inexhaustible sweet spring to maintain the living beings of a courtyard.
The well was built on the half-slope waist of Miaowan, two meters square, and about three meters deep. The bottom of the well is chiseled and bricked, and it becomes a square well box. The body of the well is built into more than 10 steps with stones, and the place where the well is out of the ground is paved with a flat bluestone slab. The slate is slightly tilted outward, which should be to prevent the overflow of water from outside. The old well guarantees the lives of more than 50 people on the lotus leaf platform. Every household in the courtyard has large and small buckets. Every evening, the men go to the well in turn to fetch water. My family lives with my grandparents. My father was living outside the home all the year round, my grandfather was suffering from severe rheumatism in his early years and could not work, and my uncle, who was four years older than me, dropped out of school to learn to be a mason. I have a large water tank at home, and filling it up is an important task for me to get home from school. At the beginning, I used a small bucket, and I had to pick seven or eight loads. When I got older, I switched to using a large bucket. The flat shoulder is made of mulberry wood, which is soft and tough.
Every time I carry a bucket to the well, I first put the left bucket on the stone slab, and then carry the right bucket in my right hand to scoop water into the well, and then carry it up with one hand, and then do the same with my left hand. The two buckets were filled with water, and they straightened up with a "hi" sound. The flat shoulder is leisurely, and the footsteps are as light as the wind with the rhythm of the bucket swaying up and down. Usually three loads, sometimes the family takes a bath, pick up four or five loads, and the tank is full. The water in the old well is magical. There are so many people who carry water every day, but the water does not drop much. And the water level is always only a few centimeters away from the slate, and it never overflows. It was only in the drought that it showed some inadequacy, and it had to go down to the well to get water. I remember that year's great drought, it was a scorching heat, there was no rain for three or four months, the fields were cracked open a few inches wide, and the water level of the old well receded to the well box, but it still continued, and you could see the spring at the bottom of the well gurgling upward. The big buckets were no longer needed, so seven or eight families took small buckets, scooped them, and took turns to go down to the bottom of the well to scoop up water. For a long time, it was my turn in the middle of the night. took a flashlight, carried a small bucket to the well, lifted the bucket, carried the scoop down to the bottom of the well, and loaded it into the bucket one by one. It took about half an hour to load it!
Water is as expensive as oil, so you should naturally save money at home. Cooking rice and stir-frying, the family fights for water. I don't have to take a bath, so I boil a basin of water and everyone takes turns to wipe their bodies. Washing feet is also seven or eight pairs of feet rubbing in a basin. The wash water is boiled in a small pot on the stovetop. When I woke up in the morning, my mother was already cooking on the fire, so I brought a basin, scooped two scoops of water from the pot, and took turns washing my face with towels with my younger siblings. None of the used water can be poured, but must be used to cook pig food and serve the pigs in the pigsty. But no matter how long the drought lasts, the old well has never dried up, and even though the livelihood of the people in the first courtyard is difficult, they will be unconsciously affected by the old well. It has been more than 50 years since I left my hometown, and the burden of carrying water at home has passed over my younger brothers in turn. Now, with the passage of time, the family only leaves the second brother to live in Lotus Leaf Terrace. Social development has driven the pace of rural changes, the village has erected pipes and erected a frame from the rhinoceros hole located at the foot of the Huta Daoren Mountain, and the lotus leaf platform has used tap water, and every household has opened its head, and the clear spring water is flowing ......The second brother said that water from the old well had not entered the house three years ago.
The day before yesterday, I went back to my hometown to celebrate my mother's 91st birthday, and suddenly missed the old well. Changsha had nothing to do and had no time to return home, so he asked his second brother to take a picture of Laojing ** and send it to me after he went home. **Come, open it and see, the old well is not like the old appearance: the wild grass is not to say that the surrounding area is around, the stone steps in the well are lined up one after another, and the steps go down, and there seems to be no water in the well box. The second brother said that there has been no rain since the beginning of winter last year, and the old well has dried up. But the old well has never dried up!I think it should be with the ease and comfort of unloading the mission, sleeping peacefully in the rushing trend of the times, accompanied by hundreds of years of endless legends, as well as my hardships in the sweet memories of the past!