The two small rivers in front of and behind my hometown, also winding streams, do not have an official name. The villagers take the gate as the direction, and the river in front of the house is called the front river, and the back river is called the back river. I have lived in Liujia Street in Huoshi Village in the middle of these two rivers since I was a child, and the river in front of the door is about 5,000 meters long, originating from the Changkeng source of Fan Pul Village, passing through Fan Pulp Village and Huoshi Village; The back river originates from the highest peak of Heshi Town, the Hekeng Reservoir at the foot of the big banjian, about 4,000 meters long, passing through Ganqiao Village and Huoshi Village; The two streams converge into the place called Guhu Temple in Huoshi Village, the villagers call it the Guhu River, it swims about 1,000 meters, intersects together with the geographical name Fengshui River, and flows to about 40,000 meters, in Zhengcun Township and Xiushui River converge into Xiujiang, enter Poyang Lake, flow into the Yangtze River, and return to Xiushui
In the center of these two rivers there is a hill called Shenling, which is the only small temple in Heshi Town. The two rivers surround parts of the three villages, and the number of people living in them is about 1,000, and the surnames are mainly Liao, Dai, Zhang, Liu, etc., and the two rivers irrigate about 3,000 acres of fertile land in the three villages.
The changes of the two rivers are almost the same, before 1990, when I was a child, I swam and fished here, picked honeysuckle and pulled small bamboo shoots by the river on both banks, where the water was pure and clear enough to drink, I went home from school in the spring, went to the river embankment to cut a bamboo, burned red on the lamp with a patching needle, bent into a fishing hook with scissors, and caught more than a pound of fish for more than half an hour. The fish species in this river are the same, the number of fish is somewhat different, the river in front of the door is deep and muddy, catfish, crucian carp, carp, mandarin fish, the back of the river is shallow and rocky, peach blossom fish, willow root fish, stone horn fish, etc., to 1990 after the village began to use electricity, pesticide fishing, to 2000 there are no fish, this is the first change. After 2000, the two rivers began to change again, and the villagers increased their incomes, built new cement houses, and dug sand and stones in the river, and the river became deeper, with uneven potholes and poor water flow. Many villagers are accustomed to throwing dead chickens, ducks, piglets, etc. into the river, and let the fish eat them with the water, but now there are no fish in the river, and the water flow is not smooth, and the consequences can be imagined.
It is divided into two parts, the upper and the lower, to record the stories of the faces, people, and land of these two streams.
On the morning of the first day of the first lunar month this year, I went to the neighbor's house to pay a New Year's visit, after eating at noon, I thought of a quiet place to relax, from last night's Chinese New Year's Eve to noon the sound of firecrackers and fireworks "booming" did not stop, the noise was dizzy, my hometown in Flint Village is not much different from the countryside in the country, firecrackers and fireworks symbolize the hope of a rich harvest this year, in order to be quiet, I will shoot along the bank of the back river, complete the lower part of the story of the hometown river.
Firecrackers and fireworks are louder than in previous years The reason is that there were old people who passed away last year, and the custom is to worship the New Year, and the New Year is to put a string of firecrackers or fireworks in front of the door of the old man's house, and then insert a pair of oil candles in front of the portrait of the old man's home, bow etiquette, and the old people who passed away from the previous year to last year are more, as if the flow of the back river has become less, and I feel that it is almost broken!
The Houbei River originates from the foot of Dabanjian Mountain, which belongs to the Jiuling Mountain Range, with an altitude of 998 meters, and is the highest peak in Heshi Town, Xiushui County, Jiujiang District, Jiangxi Province. The change on both sides of the river in my hometown in the past two years is that the old word hall of each surname has been demolished, and the new word hall has been made on the original site, which is really a pity! Some of the ancient buildings of the word hall have escaped the natural disasters and wars of the Ming and Qing dynasties for hundreds of years, as well as the looting of the crazy Cultural Revolution and the four olds, and cannot escape the demolition of the descendants of the sages in order to save face.
The back river is larger and clearer than the front river, the reason is that the riverbed is mainly gravel seeds and sand, and these are high-quality building materials for building concrete, and now this river is more harmful than the front river, and the water is no longer as clear as in the past. There are two roads in the lower reaches of the back river, which is divided into G45 Daguang Expressway and the county road, there is an ancient camphor tree group between the two roads, the ancient camphor trees gather in the clusters of stones, the scenery is beautiful, we call this place Shi Jiniang.
The riverbed has been excavated in the past 30 years to become deeper, the water flow is no longer rapid, and now it is repairing the ecology that it can not repair, just like the three villages by the river, there are fewer young people, and the elderly and children are left to guard the Spring Festival, in fact, the industrial development of Xiushui County is very fast, sometimes enterprises can not recruit technical employees, and rural and county college students, after graduation, most of them choose to work in developed cities such as Guangdong, and work in this county is the background, and the big city is the ability.
The water of this river in the family township, there are three dams in memory, this place is called the back alley, when I was a child, I came here to divide the water, and the water was released from top to bottom to my own field, generally speaking, the dam was blocked first and then went down along the canal, and the water volume of the family field was blocked on the point, and gradually distributed to my own field, and I must not let other people's fields enter the water for my own interests, so as not to cause unnecessary disputes. The big canal of the year is gone, and the fields have lost the curved, soft, clean, and vibrant beauty of the lines, replaced by the pale feeling of the whole piece of stiff and ravines that have been crushed by large machines.
The back river is very strange here, why do you want to turn a few words, so that it goes directly to its source Hekeng Reservoir, we have a beautiful local legend, saying that there is a Yin River under the tip of the big plate, and the water comes out from there. There is a shrine on the side of this zigzag, it is the place where the villagers come to worship the earth god, and the dividing line between the two villages is also divided from here, one side of the river is Ganqiao Village and the other side is Sawbanqiao Village, in fact, the flint village is called flint bridge village in history, I don't know when it was changed to flint village?
When this bridge used to be a wooden bridge, the bridge under Xiling was a place connecting the villagers of Huoshi Village and Ganqiao Village, when I was a child, my mother took me to my aunt's house in Ganqiao Village to visit relatives, I was afraid to cross this dangling wooden bridge at that time. Her aunt was anxious and caused her to die prematurely, and since then we have had little contact with our cousins, and it is common for the new generation of villagers to break off their relatives.
A winding stream with crystal clear spring water surrounds the village all year round. There are a few camphor trees on both sides of the creek, its tender green in spring, shade in summer, fallen leaves in autumn, deep in winter, fragrant fluttering with the wind, so natural and graceful dancing. The fish and shrimp in the stream in the morning light, chasing each other and jumping out of the water, painting sparkling ripples, this is the poetry of the back river in the 80 years of the last century.
One of the sources of the back river, once upon a time here was the sand and gravel riverbed, there were long thatched dwarf grass in the riverbed, pheasants and birds played in the bushes, on both sides were wetland paddy fields, the water was full of natural seepage and flowed into the river, women used to wash clothes by the river, the water was light and cyan and you could see colorful stones, with the increase of the population of the villages on both sides of the river, it was also in the river beach barren fields to make houses and fields, forming such a scene.
The birthplace of the Back River, Hekeng Reservoir. I don't know when the reservoir was built? When spring comes, she has to store water stocks, and there is enough water to continuously inject energy into the downstream, endlessly, nourishing the idyllic villages on both sides of the river, nurturing many lives on both sides of the river, and giving birth to the hope of civilization.