In Xiqiao Village, Wen'an County, my hometown in my memory, an 8-meter-wide north-south street and a 4-meter-wide east-west street constitute the "traffic artery" of the village. Adjacent to the cross street is a two-meter-wide alley, door to door, neighborly harmony, chickens and dogs smell each other.
The two streets of Xiqiao Village have their own functions. North and South Street, to the south you can go to Wen'an County, to the north you can go to the 106 National Highway, to Beijing and Tianjin. East and West Street, all the way to the west is the crop field to the west depression, and to the east is still the crop field. If the people in the village are well-dressed, most of them run to the north and south streets. Ben Nan went to the county to call "errands", Ben Bei is either to do business or to go to relatives, who has relatives in Beijing or Tianjin, that is very spirited. New things are pouring into the village from the north and south. In the east-west direction, it is different, dressed plainly, carrying a wicker basket, carrying an iron lift, or carrying a big hoe, walking in a hurry, or leading a mule to lead a horse, and the bell rings crisply in the east and west streets and alleys.
For the villagers, the east-west streets are life, and the north-south streets are the world. The east-west streets are the basis for running south to north, and mule-horse carts or bicycles bring back food for food and firewood for heating. The north-south street is the goal and direction of the east-west street.
The new look of Xiqiao Village.
In my memory, most of the houses in the village have three rooms with a small courtyard. Whenever it comes to eating, when the population is large, a kang table can not be surrounded, there are people eating on the pot, eating on the kang, and there are people who distribute food, and the pot stove often warms a pot of water and heats the tortillas, because there are always those who have not filled their stomachs after returning home. Before going to bed at night, there will be a "family meeting" to arrange the work of the family the next day.
My family and the former neighbor Wang Daju, the rear neighbor Meng Xiaoshen, and a few families live in the southeast corner of the house, the east is a large puddle formed after the building takes soil, and is gradually eaten away by garbage, and the days go by, forming a stinky puddle. Our families belong to the "old and young" area of the village, and we have to walk through several alleys to get to the north and south streets.
After the reform and opening up, especially in the past 10 years, the village has undergone tremendous changes. First, there was the West Avenue facing the North and South Streets, which was wider than the old North and South Streets, and was flanked by trees and green belts, and then there was the East Street. An east-west street strings the streets of Xiqiao Village into a "卅" shape. There is also a "development zone" in the north of the village, all large and small enterprises have moved into the north of the village, and there is also a North Street in the north of the village, which is not completely overlapping with the street of the village. Later, the village extended from south to north, and the streets of the village became a grid of four horizontal and four vertical.
Walking into the village, those trolleys, mules and carriages have long been gone, almost every family has a car, and every household is a small building courtyard with "steel beams, iron columns, cement and gray bricks".What is eaten, what is worn, what is fashionable in the city, what is in the village. The nightlife is also rich and colorful, and there is a fitness plaza and a night market barbecue in the north of the village, which is often full of laughter. They no longer have to think about the work in the fields, the land has been transferred to intensive farms, people drive cars to the fields, as soon as the harvest season comes, modern agricultural machinery and tools go to the field, threshed grain is packed. Traditional agriculture has turned into leisure agriculture and tourism agriculture, and villagers have changed from farmers to workers who commute to work on time, or to business owners ......
Several streets in the village have been changed from asphalt roads to 30-centimeter-thick concrete roads. There are water, sewage and gas pipes under the concrete road, and the green belts on both sides of the road make the countryside colorful and beautiful.
Five years ago, the stinky puddle that had plagued us for years was also filled. The village signed a land lease contract with an entrepreneur engaged in the assembly of a certain brand of electrical appliances, which not only increased the income of the village, but also solved the stubborn problem of stinky puddles. This long-term entrepreneur who cares about his hometown spent a summer, invested millions of yuan to fill in the big pit, and according to the village plan, laid a cement road in the southeast corner and set up a garbage collection point. All of a sudden, our homes became enviable houses on the street. The road at the door of the house is connected to other roads in the village, the western, southern, eastern and northern rings, and the village has an outer ring road, which is simply a rural version of a small city. There is no difference between people going east to west and south to north, the village streets extend in all directions, and no one says that our family is "backed", and no one judges which way he is going to go according to the dress of the pedestrian.
My house is adjacent to Meng Xiaoshen's house to the north and built a two-story building, and the new daughter-in-law also entered the house. Several other families originally wanted to move out of this "back", but after the ring line opened, they all changed their minds, rebuilt their houses, and opened the courtyard door wide to facilitate access to cars. Across the street is the newly opened factory, where the workers on the production line are skillfully working, in fact, most of them are farmers in the village, and every three or two days a large truck comes to pull away the assembled products. The "Ring Road" has become a "happy road" that drives the locals to take off.
When I go back to my hometown every year, I can see the changes in the village, and I always feel surprised and happy. During the Spring Festival this year, when night falls, the street lights are lit up, and the red lanterns of every house in the village are lit up. I was looking down at the village from upstairs, and suddenly I noticed that the streets of this bustling village were connected into a huge red "Chinese knot"!At night, this huge "Chinese knot" illuminates the happiness of the beautiful countryside, connects the wider world, and holds up the colorful tomorrow and bright future of the village.
Author: Tan Guolun, a member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association and a member of the Hebei Writers Association. Now working in Langfang ** Society. He has published a collection of essays "Green Care", "Walking Through the Black Land", and a long **"Girl River Heart").
*: Hebei Provincial Party Committee "Communist Party Member" magazine in November.