Except for the signature, it is all taken by Zhang Xuebin.
What is a dragon? "Sayings" says, "Dragon, the length of the scales." It can be dark and bright, it can be small and huge, and it can be short and long; The spring equinox ascends to the sky, and the autumn equinox dives into the abyss. "When I was a child, I didn't know such words, but the imaginary dragon is like this. Mysterious, powerful, clouds and rain, infinite changes, the dragon sees the head but does not see the tail, has never seen the dragon, but it seems that the dragon is everywhere.
If you want to find the dragon, you have to start with the tree.
In Yunnan, if you see a big tree in the distance in the village, walk over and take a closer look, you will often find a small shrine at the root of the tree, in front of the shrine inserted some burned incense, but also scattered some burned paper money, if it is after the festival, naturally you can also see some red firecracker crumbs.
On the hill behind Han Village, there is such a big tree. It is a pine tree, standing on the slope of a hill, looking from afar, like a lush cloud. I remember when I was about to go to graduate school, I met Ms. Wang Anyi for the first time, and she asked me to introduce the village where I lived. At that time, I was extremely nervous, my head was empty, and I blurted out that our village was half in the dam and half on the slope of a hill, and there was only one tree on this hill ......In fact, how could there be only one tree on this mountain? But when I thought about it in Shanghai, thousands of miles away, I really felt that there was only this one tree on the mountain behind me. This tree is superior to all the other trees on the hill, and for this reason there is only one tree on the hill.
Every time I stand under the big pine tree with a small shrine, I look up and look up, the branches are strong, tortuous, and a little bit of sunlight is scattered from the dense needles, duckweed-like, falling on the thick trunk, the breeze is coming, the light is floating, and the main trunk of the pine tree covered with old scales is like a dragon writhing its body and breaking through the water and soaring into the clouds.
The connection between the tree and the dragon planted a seed in my heart at a very young age. At that time, I often heard my grandmother say that the dragon goes to the sky and wants a tree. This tree must be a big tree in a radius of several miles. So, when I saw the big tree, I couldn't help but think of the dragon, and I couldn't help but imagine the scene of a giant dragon circling around the tree.
If the tree leaves the dragon's footsteps, then the well is the dragon's dwelling. Han Village, as well as the nearby small villages of Tianbaxin, Shanhou, and Jiulong, have several wells. When I was a child, I often went to the dragon pond and the big well next to my home. Although these wells are not very deep, they all have "dragon's eyes", bubbling water all year round. The old people said that in the dragon's eyes, it was the Dragon Palace. In the Dragon Palace, there are naturally dragons living there. For this reason, even if the well is very shallow, it seems that the direction of the dragon's eye is deep and mysterious.
However, after this search, not a single scaly claw of the dragon was found. Where is the dragon? Are dragons really everywhere? But how can it be found nowhere?
On the day of the thunderstorm, I heard that it was said that it was a certain person in the horizontal ditch next door, when I went up the mountain, in the secluded place of the mountain forest, I saw a golden snake, coiled, the size of a dustpan, slowly stretched, ah! The big snake has horns on the top of its head, it's not a snake, it's a dragon! The man was so frightened that he ran home, sweating, and fell seriously ill, and it took him months to recover. When I heard this story, I was probably in the fifth grade of primary school, and I thought to myself, isn't this the modern version of Ye Gong Haolong?
I really want to see the dragon, and I believe that I will never run away when I see it. Instead, I will stand still, staring intently into its eyes—imagining that there is a frozen fire in its eyes, which slowly dissipates due to the heat of the eye contact, and then rises ...... flamesBut ah, dragon, how can you see it?
I can only take a step back and see the shadow of the dragon.
The shadow of the dragon is naturally also a dragon - the dragon that winds from the small village and the field, and is used as a claw by man, suddenly high, suddenly low, suddenly staggering, and suddenly rising. These "claws" are all people with red faces, their rough hands hold wooden sticks with thick arms, and the wooden sticks support the body of the dragon, and the one that supports the dragon's head is even more terrible, and it takes three or five people to work together, even if it is to pull the dragon's tail, it is very difficult, and it must be a strong person. He, they, these people who hold up the whole dragon with ordinary bodies, at this moment, with the dance of the dragon, there is something that does not belong to them - what is it? There are some things in this world that are destined to be difficult to explain, and this is one of them—to put it simply, they have more strength than usual, they no longer feel tired, they can't help but concentrate on all their spirits, and there is always a drunken smile on their faces—he, they, a group of ordinary people who can't be more ordinary, in this moment, have acquired a divinity beyond themselves, and he and them have become part of the dragon.
The dragon is moving forward, dancing.
It's spring, and winter is over. "Ascending to the sky at the spring equinox", although the dragon can only crawl on the earth after all because of the drag of this group of mortals, but the heat on the earth is steaming, everything is surging, and the dragon has obtained the heat of the human world because of the drag of this group of mortals.
A group of mortals, a divine dragon, at this moment, reached a state of harmony on the earth.
Such a scene has appeared countless times, and it will inevitably appear countless times in the future.
Man is God, and God is man.
Stunned from the sidelines, it was a newborn son of humanity. At that time, how old was I? I can't remember. Maybe only three or four years old? Four or five years old? I just remember that when I saw a dragon dancing, I really thought it was a dragon dancing - it was like nonsense, but only such nonsense can show my heart at that time. At that time, a young human really believed that there were dragons in this world. I, and we, all human beings, are just one of the countless beings on earth. Around us, there are gods, immortals, demons, monsters, nature, and dragons. They are always staring at us with subtle eyes
So, in such a state of mind, when I was a child, during the New Year's festival or temple fair, I saw a dragon slowly dancing from afar, how should I react?
The heartbeat, echoing the sound of drums and gongs
Knock-knock-knock-boom-knock-knock-boom
The dragon, past the golden of the rape flowers, the greenness of the wheat, and the pink of the peach blossoms, drew nearer, and the imaginary unreal—nay, the real god that had never been seen before—came towards me with all sincerity!
Today, I am in my forties. At this age, do you still believe that there are dragons in this world? I've read a lot of texts about dragons on the Internet, a dragon falling incident in a certain place, a dragon skeleton in a certain place, and many people in a certain place have witnessed dragon swimming......Hey, how I want to believe that there are dragons in this world, and I wish there were dragons in this world. But the more I read this kind of text, the more convinced I became that there were no dragons in this world, and in the same way, there were no gods, no immortals, no demons, no monsters—hey, what a frustrating thing that was. I don't like this kind of world at all, such a world is like a desert - modern science tells me that the earth that human beings live in is like a grain of sand in the vast universe. What am I, who was born on this grain of sand and will die on this grain of sand? Nothing.
raw, so insignificant. Death, too, is insignificant.
A real warrior who dares to face the bleak ...... of life"A real warrior also dares to face his insignificance. At the age of forty, I want to be such a warrior. So, when I don't believe in dragons anymore, and when I see them, I still want to be a part of them—and I want to support this imaginary god with a lot of people with a red face
That morning, I rode the 3,600-kilometre mountain bike and took my children to Hancun Temple. In front of Hancun Temple, there are two wells, one has more than 100 square meters, for the villagers to wash their clothes and vegetables, and the other is only three or four square meters, for the villagers to drink. When I was a child, the fields here were swamps and filled with water, which is now obediently disciplined by cement and stone. When I was a child, these three or four square meters of water well was the drinking water for many nearby villagers**, and my classmates and I also went here to carry water to the primary school for the whole school to drink. And now? With tap water, I'm afraid that few people drink the water here. However, the water in the well is still clear. Floating moss, gently swinging it away with his hand, alarmed a small blue fish, and escaped into the water outlet - when I was a child, I heard my grandmother tell a story, saying that Han Village was originally very arid, and it can be said to be a "dry village". One day suddenly water came, and everyone drank and celebrated, and a strange old man came in and said that he had brought the water from such and such a place. The place he said was dozens or hundreds of kilometers away, and no one believed it. Later, he said, he would put a gourd scoop into the spout. To everyone's surprise, a few days later, a gourd ladle really floated out of the well - no, the story doesn't seem to be like this, it seems to say, and finally it turns out that the old man is the dragon king himself. But what kind of plot is it? I can't remember at all.
Squatted by the well and took a sip of water to drink. I also gave the children a sip to drink. Unlike the taste of mineral water, there is a message of the land.
Go to the Hancun Temple on the side.
The door was open. The yard is empty. Buddhism was broadcast on the loudspeaker**. Behind the roof of the main hall peek out the treetops of several cypress trees. There was no wind to be seen, only the conical treetops swaying gently.
There are two old people in the village chatting in the north wing. When I went to say hello, they didn't remember who I was for a moment. After saying the names of their grandfather and father, they suddenly realized. Q, what do I have to call them according to the seniority of the village? You have to call the Grand Duke.
After chatting for a while, I realized that they were discussing the matter of going to the county seat on the first day of the Lunar New Year to "play dragon". In the past few years of the epidemic, many things have been put on hold, including playing dragons. This year's re-opening, the grand self-explanatory. It was only then that I learned that Han Village had its own dragon. It is a green dragon, which is placed in the temple of the God of Wealth in the south of the Hancun Temple. The dragon has 36 sections, about 150 meters long, and it takes 36 people to support the dragon's body, and if you want to dance the dragon's head, you need 4 people. In addition, there must be drummers, gongs, and co-workers, all of whom make a total of sixty people.
The children went to the Temple of the God of Wealth to see the dragon. One of the Grand Dukes followed and opened the door. The child stood at the door, watching, for a long time, not going in or leaving. Looking back, in the dark room, a huge dragon head stood quietly by the silent white wall, with a long beard and blazing eyes, looking at me from the abyssal void.
As the days passed, I soaked my stomach and intestines in alcohol almost every day. One night at the Yizhan Bar, I drank a lot with Xuebin, Jianfeng and others. Talking about seeing a dragon in Hancun Temple, he said that he wanted to play with the dragon. The next day, Gillian called** and said that you were going to play the dragon, is it true? My mind slowly turned, and I remembered that I had indeed said this last night, and of course it was true. Hung up ** and went to do something else. Two days later, Gillian called ** again and asked if she had signed up. I thought to myself, there are not so many young people in the village, right? I was busy with something else. Until the morning of the thirtieth day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, Gillian called ** again and asked if she had signed up. Then I hurriedly rode a bicycle to the village to find the grand duke. The eldest duke's son opened the door and said that the grand duke had gone to the village to discuss the matter, so he hurriedly rode to the village committee, waited for a while, saw the grand duke, and said that he wanted to play dragon. Several elders in charge of this matter in the village said, "It's full, you have to talk about it earlier." Some people say that you will go back when you play dragon at Dongshan Temple on February 18. In the end, the Grand Duke said, it's okay, you can take the bus to the county together tomorrow, but there is no uniform clothing to wear.
Early in the morning of the first day of junior high school, I waited at Henggou Primary School. A lot of people were there, and I met elementary school classmates I hadn't seen for a long time. While everyone was chatting, the sun was rising, and the mountains around the dam were covered in mist.
From a distance, the green dragon came out of the Hancun Temple.
Qinglong put it on the pickup truck. Dozens of us, on the other hand, got on four specially assigned buses. There were no seats, so I sat on the stairs. The car drove out slowly. The first time I took the bus in the county, everything outside the bus seemed to change. After a while, I arrived at the old cinema square in the county seat.
There are so many people. Standing on the edge of the crowd, the dragons of each village and village are wandering in the square. This is where I first saw dragons when I was a child. The old movie theater is still like that, but the old days are gone.
Someone patted him on the shoulder from behind, it was the familiar Deputy Chen, and he made an appointment to go to the house next to him for dinner. said that he wanted to have a drink, at this time, he heard the sound of drums shaking the sky, and knew that the dragon was about to set off, so he hurriedly drank a tempered glass of white wine and ran back to the square
The sun was fierce, and one by one, in the sound of drums, turned out of the square.
Found the green dragon of Han Village. Come to the faucet and follow all the way. A short time later, a young man approached and said that a senior in the village had said, let me lift the dragon's head. Sudden enough. After a short pause, everyone handed me the wooden stick that held up the faucet. The small arm is thick, held, cold, hard. Suddenly, the people on the side all threw their hands, and for a while, the faucet fell to one side. Ah! Everyone shouted and hurriedly held on.
It's not hard to watch people carry burdens, and it's the same to watch others play dragons. Later, I learned that there were steel bars in this green dragon's head, not to mention the heaviness, and the center of gravity was still high. Even if you hold it up, you have to make the faucet come alive, you have to look from afar, you have to meditate, you have to look around, you have to look back, you have to look back ......When the dragon head is alive, the whole dragon is alive. The whole dragon is alive, and those of us who play dragons are alive at this moment.
The sun is violent. I have never lived in the eyes of the crowd of onlookers like this. Everybody is looking at the dragon, no one is looking at one person in it. Again, no one looked at me. I hardly look at the people on the side, just focus on the green dragon above my head.
What is a dragon? It is to hold on with all your might, and it is to run closely with everyone.
When I follow the green dragon, or the green dragon follows me, to the Sanguan Square, it is like coming from the years of my childhood to the present life. My family sent me a message saying they didn't see me. Of course, it turned out in the end because they were looking at the wrong dragon. But if you look at the dragon right, can you see me? At the moment when I struggled to raise the dragon's head and dance with the dragon, I was willing not to be seen.
At an age when I no longer believe in the existence of dragons, I still want to be a part of them.
Feb 23, 2024 2:17:26
Editor's note] People who play fools are the happiest.
On the evening of the second day of the Lunar New Year, I watched Phoenix Satellite TV in Singapore, and a news of "Dragon and Lion Dance in the Mainland Garden for the New Year" attracted my attention, because I heard four very cordial words: Yunnan Baoshan ......When replaying, I hurriedly took the screen and sent it to Moments: "Thousands of miles away, I see my old friends like [Cheers]". Dong Jinguan snickered: "I'm security in the corner" "At the beginning of the second lunar month."
8. There are two more on February 11." Fu Yuehui was even more embarrassed: "I was at the scene, and I went to carry the dragon head for a while." What else can I say, of course, "I see you [proud]".
Bottom left: Yang Jianfeng, bottom right: left Xuejiao.
I was able to meet Dong Jinguan because of Fu Yuehui - last year, during the Qingming Festival, he returned to his hometown to go to his grandmother's grave, and by the way, he became the guide of my trip to Gaoligong. Xiao Dong loves to ride around, and his short ** is particularly tender, I shared that in "Blind Date and Love Family", my mother and sister-in-law like it very much. The so-called trip to Gaoligong, in fact, I climbed a little to the side of the mountain, and then resolutely decided to go down the mountain when I was tired of being a dog, completely ignoring their surprise: "This is not yet the top?!" I thought to myself, "I'm going to get to the top, I can't climb down on my own!" ”
Yunbian Road" column, many of the titles are three words, such as "New Year's Pig Rice", which was sent during the Chinese New Year in 2019. Because I have been to Baoshan, I followed Fu Yuehui in front and back, up and down in his house and walked around twice, and when I read it again this year, I feel a little more. As for this dragon dance, blindly guessed that he would still use three words, such as "carrying the dragon's head", but it didn't. I happened to be listening to "the people who write songs are fake and serious, and the people who listen to songs are the most ruthless", so I naturally wrote the above eight words.
Author: Fu Yuehui.
Text: Fu Yuehui Editor: Qian Yutong Editor: Shu Ming.
*Please indicate the source of this article.