Author丨Zhang Zhizhen.
Dated 28 February 2022).
It seems that it has been long-awaited, and as if inadvertently, spring has arrived. Peach red willow green, fragrant grass, mixed peanut trees, full of excitement ......Endless beautiful words are used to depict the spring color. The cycle of seasons, winter goes to spring, natural and orderly, but the arrival of any season is not as good as the hope for spring. A foot into the spring, full of eyes and ears are a different kind of vitality, fun, everything is pleasing to the eye, all things with their own unique attitude to contribute to the spring of a beauty, let people pity, let people sigh, which I want to offer a love to the little swallow, a tribute.
Little Swallow is a spring elf.
Little Swallow has a special relationship with us.
When my mother was alive, every year at the end of the year, she had to dust the house and clean the altars and jars again. When I was a child, my family was poor, and I had to clean up the house, so my brother and I carried a duster made of bamboo poles and small brooms to clean up the cobwebs and dust in the corners of the house. The mother wrapped in a headscarf told her that the swallow's nest on the roof beam must not be damaged, and that it was the home of the little swallow.
At that time, my family had three small thatched huts with five wood floors, four earthen walls, and the south wall of more than two meters of the earthen wall was a reed wall (a kind of wall building material with a high beam pole or corn stalk as a support and then wrapped around the straw to form a cylinder, arranged together with bamboo or wooden strips sandwiched into one, made into a light wall, and then pasted with mud on both sides to block the wind and rain, the structure is light, local materials, the reed wall is good to open the window, the window is not big, it is used for ventilation and lighting in summer, and a pu fan is used to block it in winter, and the home is not cold. At that time, glass was precious, and even plastic film was a rarity that would not exist until many years later. Later, I learned that the window was also opened for the little swallow, and it was the gateway for it to enter and exit.
The small thatched hut is not big, about fifty square meters, the east and west two bedrooms, the parents live in one, the children live in one, the house has to give up a piece, as a passage to the kitchen, and a small kitchen on the side of the kitchen is integrated, so that a small dining table can be placed, and then put a water tank, a cupboard, a plate of earthen stove and a firewood warehouse, in short, the most crowded place in the house is the kitchen. The room in front of the hall is relatively spacious as usual, there is a table of eight immortals against the wall on the north side, and then two chairs are placed, and the fangs and beams on both sides are also hung with nails, rakes, hoes, dung, scoops, etc., and there are a few benches, and the guests come to take them down and sit, and no one also hangs on the two coupons. The gate faces south, and there is a chicken coop in the corner, usually raising a few chickens, which is also a necessity at home, otherwise, during the New Year's holidays, the maternal uncle comes to the door, and even a chicken can not be killed, and the nephew is also disgraced. The thunder in the sky is big, and the uncle on the ground is big. In family life, there is inevitably a gossip in family life, and when things get bigger, you have to ask your uncle to help administer justice. The uncle who can make friends and rarely comes to the door must also kill a chicken to reward him.
There is a swallow's nest on the beams of the east side above the hall house. At that time, people worked during the day, working at sunrise and resting at sunset. In the long summer, only the chickens pacing on the ground and the little swallows flying in and out of the house preside over the daily affairs. Chickens and swallows are originally one category, both of which are birds, but their status is very different: one is in the sky and the other is underground, and chickens are raised to eat chickens, and although swallows are not raised by their owners, they are treated as guests. The home is so cramped, so cramped, but it must also have a place to live. After the house was built, the owner of some good things also specially inserted a fork on the roof beam, and then netted a string to facilitate the swallows to make a nest. There is a swallow's nest at home, and the future is much happier. The swallow also has its own way of life, never because of the owner's diligence and make more nests in his home, it abides by the creed of a family nest, and spreads happiness to more people. Rich families can flock chickens and ducks, but they can't find a family with two swallow nests, and no matter how poor the family is, they have swallows to make nests and raise children.
Spring is beautiful, the spring flowers bloom, the swallow comes, people appreciate it as the messenger of spring, and I would say, the swallow comes in the footsteps of the insects. People like the little swallow, in addition to its beautiful singing and vigorous figure, it can catch pests and is a good helper for farmers. At that time, the crop yield was not high, and there were not many people who could eat enough in all seasons. The common rice variety is called cucumber indica, and there is a slip of the tongue that goes like this: three acres of cucumber indica, harvested only one hat tip. It can be seen how difficult it is to have a full stomach.
In the year of insect infestation, you have to flee the famine and ask for food, and leave your hometown. Little swallows eat insects to help people take food from insects. People are in love with swallows, not like the sparrows, although they eat insects, but they also eat grains, not much rice and wheat stalls are on the field, it also dares to be a thief in front of it, once regarded as one of the "four evils", by people tortured and killed. Like now, excellent rice and wheat varieties are constantly emerging, and one mu and tons of grain have long been realized, not to mention that "carbon dioxide" can be converted by machines to produce edible starch. Maybe the food will also be produced by the factory's production line. "Gain three pounds every Chinese New Year. "Big fish and big meat every day, every day is better than the New Year. In the Tang Dynasty, he was rich and rich, "fat is beautiful", but some people have also testified: according to the aesthetic inheritance of the Chinese, all dynasties have been "thin" for beauty. Now that we are in a prosperous era, most of the rich people of all kinds will not marry or marry a big fat man. The richer you are, the more you will, throughout the ages, people have the same heart.
In a small home with limited crampedness, leaving a "nest" place for the little swallows is to invite the little swallows to catch insects and eliminate pests in order to have enough food and clothing. The coexistence of people and swallows and swallows and the coexistence of each other has also proved an indisputable fact: for a long time, most people have lived in a situation of insufficient food and clothing.
Last century. In the 70s and 80s, the family turned the small thatched hut into a three-room tiled house with seven wooden floors, and the chicken coop was moved to the corridor outside, but the bird's nest was still on the roof beam of the lobby. When he was tired of flying, he rested on the wires in front of the window, chattering, occasionally combing his gentleman's clothes, and then lightly skimming the water after the rain to catch a moth that had escaped. "The fragrance of rice flowers says a good year", and there is also a murmur of a little swallow in this "saying". In the early morning and evening, the figure of the little swallows is a beautiful sight.
Later, later, most of the people lived in high-rise buildings or small villas, the environment was more beautiful, trees and grass were planted everywhere, birds sang and flowers were fragrant, and artificial bird nests were installed on the trees in the park. But inadvertently, it is rare to see beautiful little swallows, even in the countryside and wilderness, it is difficult to find the traces of small swallows, let alone find the swallow nests on the roof beams. In just a few decades, with us, the swallows have lost their "nesting" place.
Little Swallow, dressed in flowers, comes here every spring, "Is Little Swallow still coming?" Will it still be able to find the nest that its grandparents have passed down from generation to generation? The end of the year is approaching, and every household will also dust and remove ashes, and there are only small crystal chandeliers on the beams of the house, which are bright and bright.
One year, when I went to a university to listen to a lecture, the professor who gave the lecture asked, "What is the biggest factor that affects health?" The students who grasped the truth spoke one after another, some said smoking, some talked about gutter oil, some talked about haze, and some talked about food additives, and poured out their experiences and feelings. The professor just shook his head lightly and said in a low voice, "It's all wrong. Of course, these things can harm our health. However, smoking can also be enjoyable; As long as the gutter oil is not eaten, it can be used in other places to do its best; The haze was blown away by the wind; The surface of the river is polluted, but it can also be treated, and the Yellow River also has a clear water day. He exhaled slowly, "The real thing that affects our health is the change in our diet!" ”
With the progress of civilization, its primacy has remained unchanged. The sage said that "men and women eat and drink", and the affairs of men and women are related to reproduction and love, but it can only be subordinated to "food". The 5,000-year-old civilization is actually a process of pursuing "abundant food and clothing", with few exceptions, including the Longhan and Tang dynasties. However, in today's era, science and technology are advancing by leaps and bounds, and all industries are prosperous, "eating well" and "eating well" are no longer a problem, as long as you are healthy, you can eat well. More people are "fed" to run, climb, swim, and sweat in the gym. Some people skip dinner, eat a little fruit and get away with it. There is also the reversed rhythm of life in black and white, the rollercoaster of emotional ups and downs, and the earth-shaking environmental changes......Decades of history will be the interpretation of life, cultural inheritance completely subverted, accustomed to eating bran pharyngeal vegetables, occasionally involved in meat and fishy gastrointestinal system, how can withstand the bombardment of eating and drinking every day? The long evolution of life is a drastic change in social development? If you can't run it, you will strike and lie flat, are people's bodies still healthy? All kinds of problems followed, and all kinds of hospitals at all levels also prospered and became prosperous.
The sudden "change in diet" caught people off guard and had no clue how to deal with it. "Dietary structure" is a big topic, a university question, let aspiring scholars and professors use their brains to hurt their minds, we can't participate in it, but we know that for thousands of years, people have been accustomed to coarse tea, light rice, dry and thin combination. What "bran vegetables for half a year", "chicken, duck and fish" is just a delicacy of the New Year's Festival, every green and yellow day to gnaw tree bark, eat Guanyin soil, etc., and this traditional form of diet, in recent decades has become a turning page in history, we are full of food all day long, often busy and annoyed for how to achieve a healthy diet, but also have to worry about the little swallows, they have also entered a new social era with people, the hall with a few clean windows is no longer allowed to live in the meantime, they will change the way to build a nest? Their diet structure is also changing drastically, thousands of generations have eaten ecological insects, and now there are all kinds of violent or slight toxin residues in the body of insects, and insects are killed by people with various drugs Maybe there is nothing to wrap their stomachs, they will pick and eat high-sugar, salt-rich, delicious and delicious food abandoned by humans? Will swallows also get liver cancer, diabetes, limb obesity, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular malformations? Can you have your own hospital when you are sick? Are there any swallows with brains to think about how to deal with the current survival problems?
In March, when the blackbirds have moved their homes from the camphor trees to the concrete piers of the light rail bridge, and the magpies have built their nests on towers of taller, stronger high-voltage power lines, have the black elve-like little swallows found a new home?
Really, in recent years, I haven't seen the little swallow flying by.
In the old days, Wang Xie Tang Qianyan once flew into the homes of ordinary people, and the little swallow in his hometown will you ...... in **