Chen Chongzheng, Guichao, Preview of the new issue of Contemporary .

Reading guide

The feature-length ** "Returning to the Tide" uses a multi-line narrative to write the entanglements, emotions and ups and downs of the fate of four generations: In 1922, Chaoshan people Lin Hanxian and Chen Hongli spent a lot of time together for the revitalization of the family. In Thailand, they participated in the opening of a Chinese school and the operation of a Teochew restaurant, and privately assisted Mr. Qiao Lingyu in the anti-Japanese struggle, and since then they have been involved in the torrent of the times. Many years later, Chen Qiaofeng, the Chen family, and the fourth generation of overseas Chinese Huang Bolin, Li Qiming and other young people met in the renovation and revitalization of the old Chaoshan houses such as the Chen Ancestral Hall and the Bihe Library, and the love came to fruition, and the truth that had been lost in the fog of history also showed ...... outlineChen Chongzheng, a young writer, uses affectionate pen and ink to tell the vicissitudes of his hometown Chaoshan for a hundred years, expressing the unique spiritual picture of Chaoshan culture and the profound feelings of family and country. Return to the tide (excerpt).

Text|Chen Chongzheng.

Chapter I

Even if you haven't been to Chaozhou, you will probably see the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and Bihe Scholar Building in the ** taken by tourists, these two buildings look at each other across the pond, especially in the afterglow of the sunset, the sparkling and the silhouettes of the trees participate in the composition at the same time, as if the time here has been frozen from the Northern Song Dynasty.

Everything finally went well, and when the convoy returned to Bihe Ancient Town, the headlights opened a space in the dark, like opening an ancient secret, but it was inconvenient to say. Tonight, cousin Chen Dehai got married, and Chen Qiaofeng was the best man and was responsible for driving the wedding car. According to custom, the bride should not talk to the groom when she gets on the bus, so as not to quarrel often after marriage; When getting off the bus, the groom has to hold an umbrella, and the bride cannot see the sky. Details such as these were repeatedly told by the old people, so that Chen Qiaofeng remembered them well. "Your cousin is nervous, you have to remind you more of these details. Chen Qiaofeng just nodded, and complained in his heart, the groom has no experience, does he have experience?

There was a strange silence in the car on the way back. Unlike other places where marrying is noisy, the marriage customs in Teochew are very quiet, probably for fear of disturbing the gods in the sky, and the matter is made in secret, especially in the matter of marriage. When the bride entered the door, she did not miss the hour, the house was brightly lit, and she drank sweet soup balls into the cave room, and the groomsmen breathed a sigh of relief, looked at each other and smiled, and sat around eating tea and peanuts.

Suddenly, a figure appeared in Chen Qiaofeng's eyes, and then a familiar name woke up from his memory: Huang Bolin. But he assumed that it was not, because he had made a few jokes before, and only after saying hello did he realize that he had made a mistake. He soon felt that it was impossible, according to the calculation of time, Huang Bolin should no longer be in the country, maybe it was just an illusion. It was probably when he saw someone get married that he remembered his former girlfriend.

At noon on the second day, the wedding banquet was set up in the courtyard of the Bihe Study Building, the banquet was full of red tablecloths under the big tree, the relatives sat in groups of three or five, the children shuttled and played, and the chef who was temporarily invited set up a stove on the other side of the study building to stir-fry vegetables, and the iron shelf TV at the door was ** with a short film of wedding photos and silhouettes, ** festive, the old dog lay on the speaker to bask in the sun. Chen Dehai's father was making tea at the coffee table in the corridor, and next to him sat Aunt Bing, a famous goddess in Bihe Town, who was talking to the video camera with a slightly restrained expression. Aunt Bing is the sister of Chen Dehai's grandfather, and Chen Dehai calls her aunt. "I heard that my lame old lady used to like your grandfather. Chen Dehai said to Chen Qiaofeng, "After your grandfather married your grandmother (Chaozhou dialect, the same below: grandma), my aunt did not marry, and Yi 'fell master'." "Possessed by the gods. It refers to a kind of prayer and divination activity among the people in the Chaoshan area. ）

However, at this time, Chen Qiaofeng's attention was not on Aunt Bing at all, and through the crowd of shadows, he finally saw clearly that the girl holding a video recorder opposite Aunt Bing was indeed Huang Bolin. What surprised Chen Qiaofeng even more was that she could already talk to the old people in Teochew dialect with a non-standard tone. He heard her voice, and Huang Bolin also saw him, and the smile on his face quickly disappeared. Beside her was Li Qiming, who was holding a mobile phone to take pictures, Li Qiming introduced her to her friends, and after constantly changing the chat object, they finally came to Chen Qiaofeng, "Qiao Feng, come on, come on, introduce a friend to you, Huang Bolin, a well-known documentary director in China, is the one who filmed Xia Yuzhai's homestay renovation project, and this documentary also won a gold medal at an international film festival." Huang Bolin corrected in a low voice: "It's a silver award." Li Qiming didn't seem to hear it, and pointed to Chen Qiaofeng and said: "This is Chen Qiaofeng, my good buddy, a family of Chaozhou wood carvers, a good family business is not inherited, and after graduation, he opened a company to design for others." Oh yes, he also does jade carving design, and he can make very beautiful jewelry, you girls will love it. ”

The smile on Huang Bolin's face suddenly appeared, like a slide suddenly enlarged, still elusive and full of questions, she stretched out her hand and said, "Fortunately! ”

They shook hands. After eight years, Chen Qiaofeng was churning and calculating the time in his heart, but he couldn't speak. His heart was full of complicated suspicions, what is the relationship between her and Li Qiming now? Li Qiming made fun of him at this time, he usually talked the most, but now he couldn't speak when he saw a beautiful girl, and said that he would look for him after the wedding banquet was over, and he wanted him to help with something. Chen Qiaofeng nodded in agreement, and Huang Bolin's eyes quickly moved away from him and went to talk to the others. Then she didn't seem to eat much, and after the wedding feast began, she was like a butterfly flying around, filming everywhere with a VCR. Chen Qiaofeng barely ate much of this meal, he also talked and laughed with other people, but the corner of his eye was all on Huang Bolin.

Finally, she came to him to shoot, and asked about the details of local wedding customs in Teochew dialect, and when asked about Chen Qiaofeng, he shook his head and said, "I have never been married." Then he asked rhetorically: "Isn't it better for you to marry Chaozhou?" ”

Of course, Huang Bolin understood what he meant, and just smiled, "Speak well, talk more, anyway, the post-editing won't leave you a shot." The words were still familiar and clever, but Chen Qiaofeng breathed a sigh of relief, she was willing to talk to him after all.

Bihe Ancient Town is not big, but Meihua Village is the smallest village in the ancient town. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the ancestor of the Chen family came here, but when he saw the plum blossoms in full bloom all over the mountain, he was in a happy mood, so he settled here and carefully arranged a pool of feng shui separated by two houses. The pond is called the Plum Pond. Dacuo is an ancestral hall, respecting ancestors and the past; The small house is a study building, seeking fame and the future. The ancestor had two sons, the eldest son was buried on the west side of Meishan, that is, Sunset Mei; The youngest son was buried on the east side of Meishan Mountain, and it was Rishengmei. The two sons are the two heads of the house, the big room guards the ancestral hall, and the second room guards the study building, which has become a rule set by the ancestors, and the sunrise and sunset cannot be forgotten. The villagers in Meihua Village seem to live in disorder, but they are very clear about the distinction between the heads of the houses.

Beneath Meishan is the Bi River, whose water irrigates the fields of the villages of the ancient town through different culvert canals. Therefore, the plum blossom pond is not a pool of stagnant water, but a living water connected to the water body of the Bihe River. The channel connecting the river and the pond is a dragon's tongue culvert buried deep under the embankment, and the culvert is equipped with a sluice. Every month when the sluice gate is opened, there are always villagers who pull nets to fish, and there are children who like to play in the rapids before, but then there is an accident, two boys drowned, and it is expressly forbidden, and children are not allowed to approach when the gate is released. On the other hand, in the gentle blue river, it is common to see adults swimming with children. Therefore, very few children in Meihua Village, both male and female, cannot swim. In Meihua Village, the standard of maturity for boys is that they can swim to the other side of the Bihe River in one go, while girls follow their mothers to wash clothes by the Bihe River from an early age, and they will watch the boys they like swim to the other side.

This is the memory of Chen Qiaofeng's contemporaries, and for Chen Qiaofeng's mother, Zhou Xiaoying, Bihe provided fish, and she followed her father to fish on Bihe, and then transported it to Banbu Village downstream to sell. As for Chen Qiaofeng's Grandma Lin Hugo, the Bihe River in her memory leads to the sea, and her closest people are from the Bihe River to the South Seas and to another strange land to seek a living. In Grandma Hugo's account, when she and several other villagers crossed the river carrying salt from a ferry on the Bihe River, the Japanese invaders shot them on the shore. The bullet hit the Guanyin silver ornament she hung on her chest, and she picked up a life. Grandma's life is hard, so Chen Qiaofeng's family has always been a woman, grandfather Chen Tuanjie can only play with wood, and his father Chen Chungang can only play with wood, and his brother Chen Wuji still continues to play with wood. He finally couldn't bear it anymore, hoping to jump out by going out to study, not playing with wood, he learned design, played with jade, but in the end he returned to the ancient city of Chaozhou, and his life coordinates became more and more blurred.

Eight years later, Chen Qiaofeng met his ex-girlfriend Huang Bolin again, and the overseas Chinese girl who grew up in Singapore asked him to help. She was so busy that she still let him play with wood.

After the wedding banquet in the library, Li Qiming took Huang Bolin to find Chen Qiaofeng. They opened the trunk of the car and took out a wood carving, saying that this was originally a wedding gift to be given at the wedding site, but because of a bump on the road, they accidentally broke a small piece of wood, so they could only ask Chen Qiaofeng to help repair it, and then send it to others when they turned around.

I told Boleyn on the way, and I'm right for you. ”

Yes, my main business now is jade design, and I don't have a single woodcarving knife. Chen Qiaofeng thought of them coming all the way to talk and laugh, and he got angry.

Li Qiming didn't know why Chen Qiaofeng was suddenly so angry, he still smiled, and his eyes looked in the direction of the Chen family's ancestral hall, "Your father and your brother should both be working in the ancestral hall at this time, you can take us over and borrow tools for us to repair it." "Apparently he had thought of all the countermeasures before he came.

Chen Qiaofeng only glanced at the wood carving at this time, it was a wood carving with the theme of pomegranate seeds, not a machine carving, and it could be seen that the author's composition was quite ingenious. Look closely, sure enough, there is a leaf broken, the position is just the stress point, very conspicuous, if not repaired, the whole wood carving will be wasted.

Seeing that Chen Qiaofeng was stunned, Huang Bolin suddenly said on the side: "Can you fix it?" Can repair *** plus WeChat, can't fix us to find others. ”

Yes, surely, you can turn on your phone, and I'll scan your ***

Fix it and add it. ”

Seeing this beside him, Li Qiming couldn't help laughing, "Qiao Feng, I didn't expect you to have today." ”

When they started to fall in love eight years ago, the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft had just taken off, Chen Qiaofeng's mobile phone was still Nokia, WeChat had not yet been born, and Chaoshan Station had not yet been opened to traffic, which seemed to be another era. That summer, Chen Qiaofeng was bored during the summer vacation of his first year of graduate school, and in order to scrape together enough money to change his mobile phone, he worked as a coach in a swimming pool in Guangzhou. Huang Bolin was a sophomore and came out to learn to swim during the summer vacation and became Chen Qiaofeng's first client. When Huang Bolin saw Chen Qiaofeng, the first question was: "Do you speak Teochew?" ”

Chen Qiaofeng nodded in confusion.

Huang Bolin said: "How do you say drinking tea? ”

Eat tea. "How do you say a happy new year? ”

Chen Qiaofeng said in Teochew dialect. Huang Bolin nodded, and asked again: "Your Teochew dialect standard, right?" ”

Almost, you can't say ten, but nine out of nine. ”

In this way, that summer, Chen Qiaofeng took Huang Bolin to swim, and after the swimming class ended, he accompanied her to wander around in various colleges and universities in Guangzhou, teaching her Teochew dialect as she walked. Huang Bolin likes to take pictures, and Chen Qiaofeng became her model. Sometimes Chen Qiaofeng also shoots for her, but most of the time Huang Bolin is not satisfied. A heavy rain drenched them all, and so the story began. Chen Qiaofeng has never dared to tell her that this love, which lasted for three months and nine days, was actually his first love. In those days, Huang Bolin wore a pair of white canvas shoes, which looked very good. It wasn't until half a year after the breakup that Chen Qiaofeng remembered the white shoes, and his nose was still sore. He didn't like it, and he knew that such a relationship was just as lackluster as other stories on campus that ended without problems. But he clearly realized that, like all the cowardly ancestors in the family, he was probably locked by such a cowardly gene, and he was destined to have little in this life.

He asked Huang Bolin why he wanted to speak in the state language, and Huang Bolin said that she only knew that her great-grandfather's generation moved to Singapore from Chaozhou, but then cut off contact for various reasons, and the only clue was only a letter from home, and a black and white ** was attached to the envelope, and there was too little information, and she didn't even know which township in Chaozhou it was. My parents came back several times to look for their relatives, but they all got nothing because of the language barrier. So she plans to learn Teochew dialect and find a way to find her relatives in Teochew.

That's ......I'm not going to be your long-lost brother, am I? ”

Your name is Qiao Feng, don't think of yourself as Duan Yu. ”

The car stopped at the square in front of the ancestral hall. There are no plum blossoms planted on the side of the square near the plum pond, but a huge phoenix tree, which is so huge that it has been growing by this pond for a long time. Huang Bolin had never seen such a savage phoenix tree, and she held the camera in her hand and took pictures from all angles. Li Qiming went to the side to smoke, he knew that when he entered the ancestral hall for a while, it was full of wood, and it was not good to smoke, so he had a good time first. Chen Qiaofeng was not in a hurry at all, he was happy to stand next to her and watch her take pictures, and a familiar feeling resurfaced. It was the same eight years ago, but now Huang Bolin is more graceful, and she knows how to take care of her hair and how to make herself charming with light makeup. Yes, charming, her youthfulness eight years ago is completely gone, replaced by a relaxed and moderate charm. The huge ancestral hall behind her overlooked her like an elephant.

Bolin, don't lose the camera because of a tree, there are more materials for you to shoot in the ancestral hall, and these four villages and six miles have to admit that this ancestral hall is the most completely protected. Li Qiming shouted.

Li Qiming did not exaggerate. The ancestral hall of the Chen family has stood for thousands of years, although it is not immune to the misfortune of war and fire, but it is still majestic. The ancestral hall sits west to east, the three courtyards take care of the mountain-shaped topography of Meishan, the front seat close to the pond is the lowest, the middle seat is about 80 centimeters higher than the front seat, and the back seat is about 90 centimeters higher than the middle seat, and you can see this step-by-step progression from the gables on both sides. In this way, the design of the rear seat is first of all conducive to drainage, and secondly, it also makes the whole building look very layered from all angles. The overall structure of the roof is a bucket arch beam-lifting structure, brick walls, the middle block adopts the top of the hill, and the five-bay dormitory, which makes the whole building look very stable and solemn.

Pushing the door in, his father Chen Chungang was not there, and his brother Chen Wuji might have been too tired and took a nap on the stone bench in the corridor. The middle seat is Xiangtang, everyone is used to calling the middle hall, which is full of all kinds of wood and tools, messy displays, and sawdust all over the ground, and it is completely impossible to see that everyone is talking about "the repair work is nearing the end". The renovation of the Chen ancestral hall began with the typhoon three years ago, and Chen Chungang's father and son spent almost all of their time on it for more than three years, except for some small orders necessary to cope with life. According to Grandma Lin Hugo's arrangement, the ancestral hall must be completed before the frost falls on the last solar term in autumn. Plum blossom village worship ancestors are not in Qingming, but in the frost, according to the past practice, before the formal worship, there will be a celebration of the completion of the repair, worship the gods of heaven and earth, and also inform the ancestors that the ancestral hall has been repaired.

Li Qiming and Chen Qiaofeng went to the middle hall to eat tea very tacitly. The ancestral hall is being renovated, and it is messy everywhere, but the tea tray guy is still indispensable, and if you don't drink a few cups of tea before working, then the work will not be in a good state.

However, the tea brewing on the construction site can only be made from local materials, for example, the tea table used to make tea is improvised - a wooden board is placed on the solid wood base of the incense burner to serve as a tea table. The base of this incense burner has been placed in the ancestral hall for decades, and now it can only be inferred from this solid wood base that it was previously the core composition of the ancestral hall, and there should be an incense burner, and the old man said that the incense burner was bronze. It was a beautiful base, and it was hard to imagine the shape and ornamentation of the bronze incense burner on it. No wonder Aunt Bing, the goddess, would say that such an incense burner is the treasure of the town ancestral hall.

When the water was boiling, Li Qiming asked Chen Qiaofeng: "The specifications of our tea table today are very high, and this wood is mahogany, which should be very valuable." The legendary incense burner still hasn't been found? ”

Chen Qiaofeng shook his head, "It's not that easy, my grandfather has been looking for it all his life and hasn't found it." He added: "But my grandma suddenly said last time that one day, the incense burner will come back by itself." ”

Li Qiming said while making tea: "Aunt Unity is a god, and the incense burner has its own feet, so it will come back by itself." ”

I ate tea for a while. Chen Qiaofeng finally couldn't help asking, "When did you and Bo Lin meet?" Girlfriend? ”

Li Qiming smiled and didn't speak, deliberately concentrated on making tea, and said slowly for a long time: "One thing in one medicine, fleas have no salivation." (One thing drops one thing, and you can't catch fleas without saliva.) Hero, you have met a nemesis this time, so I hope it is not a cabbage cake, a hot single bank. ”

Li Qiming said this, and Chen Qiaofeng was a little settled in his heart. Li Qiming's conditions are much better than him in all aspects, and he, like Huang Bolin, is a real fourth-generation overseas Chinese. But unlike Huang Bolin, Li Qiming's family, whether it is in Chaozhou, Thailand and Malaysia, is a big family with strong strength, or he is an overseas Chinese N generation, because it is really not clear. He was sent back to Chaozhou to study from high school, and finished college at the foot of Chaozhou Hanshan, after graduation, he quickly found his direction, rented or bought in the old town of Chaozhou, and slowly changed it into a homestay. When he first started doing this, many people laughed at him for being stupid, and if he had money and nowhere to spend it, he would definitely go to waste. But in less than ten years, feng shui has taken turns, tourism in the ancient city of Chaozhou has increased year by year, and the demand for homestays has continued to rise. is also because the renovation of old houses is often inseparable from design, and it is also inseparable from the wood carving process on the beams and columns, so Li Qiming has been close to the old Chen family in recent years. Because he and Chen Qiaofeng are of the same age, they have long been the kind of friends who can be in a daze together.

Li Qiming's Chinese face, with sharp edges and elegant demeanor, is even more handsome than him in making tea. It should be said that the reason why Chen Qiaofeng has become not calm is because Li Qiming and Huang Bolin look more compatible. He understands that Huang Bolin has always had a dream of directing, and from this point of view, Li Qiming obviously has a better material foundation to support her to realize her dream.

Just as he was thinking about it, Li Qiming made a grimace with a look of disgust, "I said Qiao Feng, with your expression, you don't really treat me as a rival in love, right?" ”

Chen Qiaofeng hated that he had no city government, and he couldn't hide his thoughts at all, so he could only say honestly: "That's not what I mean, I broke up with her eight years ago, she was only twenty-one years old and a sophomore." ”

This time it's Li Qiming's turn**, oops, oops, is this world so small? Oops, fortunately, fortunately, otherwise we wouldn't even be friends ......No, brother, flowers are not staggered, people are not wrong, you have to work hard with this fate, love and work hard. (If you want to marry a wife, you can only endure hard.) ）

The world is so small, what can be done, many things are unexpected.

Chen Qiaofeng began to repair wood carvings for them, and Huang Bolin had to record the whole process, saying that he wanted to commemorate the moment of rejuvenation of this wonderful hand. But in fact, it took Chen Qiaofeng less than fifteen minutes to modify the damaged branches into new shoots, and deliberately cut off the two leaves on the other side, so that the whole picture looked less crowded and more coordinated. Li Qiming said: "Qiao Feng, you should really come back and continue to tinker with wood, you shouldn't open any design company, you are completely God's favor." ”

Chen Qiaofeng let out two smirks, and he accepted such praise completely, because he knew that if it weren't for Huang Bolin's camera gaze, he would not be in such a state. He was also amazed at how comfortable he felt when he had just used the knife.

After the wood carving was repaired, Li Qiming suggested that he should go and send gifts by himself, and let Chen Qiaofeng accompany Huang Bolin to go around more. Huang Bolin is not stupid, and he already understands what he means from the looks of the two of them. She opened the car door and sat in the passenger seat very flexibly, and said: "We are partners, and we must go together to give gifts. ”

Chen Qiaofeng asked: "Do you want to rent a book building?" ”

Li Qiming replied: "This matter has always been just a plan, so I didn't tell you in advance. In this way, go to Chen Dehai's food stall in the evening to eat yusheng, and have a good chat with you then, and I will reserve a seat for you next to Bolin. ”

Huang Bolin patted the window glass ** and said, "Qiming, what benefits did people give you, they sold me so quickly." ”

Chen Qiaofeng stood on the steps of the ancestral hall, watching their car drive away from the small square and go to the end of the study building along the curved path by the pond, and his thoughts were still unsettled.

Over the years, Chen Qiaofeng has tried his best to make himself look harmless, unlike many people around him, he has nothing to ask for, and it is easy to satisfy. He could read the password that had long been nested in the Chen family's bloodline, and it was precisely because he had no dispute that he could be very focused on something. For example, their family, focusing on Teochew wood carving and exquisite design, may not be able to maintain a day's attention on a piece of wood if they are impetuous. And often a slightly larger wood carving work, a few months have passed leisurely is already considered a fast hand, in the wood carving industry, time is always easy to appear cheap. He also noticed that the second room of Plum Blossom Village was completely different, the second room guarded the library, they did have a forward strength, they could take risks, they could be flexible, and they could make a big career. No matter how bad it is, those who don't mix well, such as Chen Dehai, a cousin who just got married, also opened a yusheng shop in the village, and the TV station made a special trip to shoot his knife skills. The sashimi was cut out at the edge of his knife, as thin as a cicada's wings, and he was still talking and laughing while swinging the knife to cut the meat, and finally the sharp knife stood on the cutting board, majestic and murderous. "The knife technique is good and it is not profitable. Chen Dehai's line was later joked by everyone. In the past, there were more overseas Chinese who went to sea to make a living in Erfangtou than in Dafangtou, and people like Chen Dehai and his younger brother Chen Dejiang are the yang side of this world; And Chen Qiaofeng, even if his father gave him and his brother the names in martial arts, they can only be the yin side of this world, the plum blossoms in the sunset, the remnant sun, and the tree by the pond waiting for the cool breeze to pass through, and they refuse to take a step forward until they die.

But eight years later, Huang Bolin reappeared in front of him, he was like a clock that was walking very slowly, suddenly replaced with a new battery, and his eyes rekindled with visible suspicion and jealousy, and probably fighting spirit.

……For the full text, please refer to the first issue of "Selected Contemporary Novels" in 2024. 

Excerpt from the forthcoming publication of the same name by Huacheng Press**

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