Chapter 57 Family Ancestor Worship (please collect and recommend)
Author: Han Ming
Chapter 57 Family Ancestor Worship (please collect and recommend)
When the group came to the town, they went straight to the market stalls.
There are a lot of people in the town today. Even though today is not a market day, everyone wants to take advantage of this day to make more money.
After taking to the streets, you can hear all kinds of shouting, hawking, and bargaining sounds.
Along the way, Grandfather Four took his three younger children to a place selling joss paper and firecrackers at the corner of the street.
Today these things are big and there are a lot of them to buy.
In the end, I bought two large boxes of firecrackers and a lot of scented paper candles.
When people in the mountains go to the mountains to worship their ancestors, they compete with each other only to see whose family bought the biggest firecrackers and how long they lasted.
Nowadays, most of the cannons bought on the market are local cannons, and they are relatively cheap. Unlike in later generations, where more electro-optical firecrackers were sold, local cannons also became very expensive due to various reasons.
The fourth grandfather took four strings of the thousand-gun cannon alone.
After buying these things, it’s time to start buying vegetables. Uncle Jianzhong learned to cook and often helped other people make banquets in the village.
So whatever groceries I want to buy next depends on his arrangement.
The first thing is to go to the meat stall. You must buy meat. If there are more than thirty people eating, you have to buy more meat no matter what.
The price of meat now is much cheaper than before the New Year. I bought more than ten kilograms for 3.5 yuan.
Everyone in the family grows a lot of vegetables, so there is no need to buy vegetables outside the home, which saves some money. For example, garlic, fungus, and other vegetables that are not available at home, you need to buy some.
Everyone's idea is that money should be spent wisely and not wasted.
In the end, there was still money left over from the 200 yuan that everyone scraped together.
Originally, Zhang An wanted to buy more things, but this is a collective matter. You can't just buy this or that if you have money, because other people will have objections.
In the eyes of others, it appears that you can.
So Zhang An finally bought a box of apples and took them up the mountain as offerings.
Today, we did not buy wine on the street, because when it comes to liquor, the glutinous rice wine and sorghum wine roasted in the village are better, and many people went to the village to buy them.
Several people came in their cars to buy things, but in the end they were sold out and there wasn’t much left in the truck.
However, he met many people from the village on the way, so Zhang An helped them put their things on them and left together.
When they arrived at home, Zhang An's mother Wang Fang and her aunts began to prepare vegetables, wash rice, and cook.
Each family brought the rice themselves, because they were all in the village and very close to each other. No one needed to tell me this, since no one said they must bring it, but everyone brought the rice themselves.
This may be an unwritten rule developed by the older generation when we were still in a large group. At that time, when going to other people's houses for banquets, they had to bring their own dry food.
So until now, such collective organizations have to bring their own food rations. After so many years, everyone has not forgotten it at all.
I don’t want to be criticized by others because of this.
Zhang An caught two large grass carps from home and brought them to make braised fish. When the uncle on the street wanted to buy them, Zhang An stopped them.
He said that he has it at home, so he can just go to his house to catch it when the time comes.
Everyone knew that the fish in Zhang An's pond were well fed, so they were not polite.
This big grass carp weighing seven to eight kilograms is rare even in the river, and it is not easy to catch when you see it.
Several women were busy at home, and then the fourth grandfather of the family took the men and children of the family to go up the mountain to build a tomb.
The second grandfather was making paper flags at home.
Because every family member had to get one, and those who split up had to get one, and it was quite a lot, so the second grandfather stayed at home to do it.
In fact, they were sold in town, but the second grandfather still wanted to buy blank paper to type.
Because the ones sold in the town are too thin, there are only a few layers in a paper flag, and only a little bit can be hung.
In fact, after the Chinese New Year, everyone went to practice one.
But no one would think that they have done this too often. This is mainly to express their respect for their ancestors.
Along the way, I followed my fourth grandfather over the mountains and ridges, repairing my ancestral graves one by one, shoveling the grass, adding soil, etc.
When the adults were repairing the tomb, some of the children would help, and some would look for Yumeko everywhere.
During this season, there are already some edible fruits on the mountain. For example, the white fruit of Baimeng is shaped like a strawberry, but it is much smaller than a strawberry.
The fruit of Baimeng is red when it is not ripe, but turns white when it is ripe. It tastes sweet, and both adults and children like it.
When Zhang An was a child, every time he saw Bai Meng on the mountain, he liked to pick it and take it home to eat together. He was reluctant to eat it when he was on the mountain.
There is another kind of dream that is bright red all over and looks similar to Bai Meng. It is called Snake Dream. This thing cannot be eaten. Adults say it is poisonous. Anyway, Zhang An doesn’t know what will happen if he eats it.
Just eat it.
Most of the children go up the mountain to play, but more often they come to get to know the land.
Otherwise, when the old people are gone, they won’t even know their ancestral graves, which will make people laugh out loud.
This kind of thing has happened before. In later generations, many young people in the village have been working outside.
When I returned to my hometown to hang the paper, I went to the wrong grave and hung it on someone else's ancestral grave.
In the end, the two families fought over the ancestral grave.
In addition to the tombs of Zhang An's grandparents, other ancestral tombs of Zhang An's family are scattered in various places.
So after running from one place to another.
They were all in the mountains. After a lap of running, it was already afternoon.
On the way home, everyone also picked a lot of young bracken, which can be taken home to make a dish.
By the time Zhang An and his entourage who had gone up the mountain came back, all the food at home was ready.
The young ferns picked by everyone were cut out immediately, and Uncle Jianzhong was in charge of the cooking.
Finally, the big pot brought from each house was filled with the vegetables cooked by the uncle, and the rice steamed in several steamers was put in it, and tied with ropes, each person picked some.
Because this meal is not to be eaten at home, but to be eaten on the graveyard.
This year we spent time at Grandpa Zhang An’s tomb, so the adults picked up prepared meals.
The children help carry the dishes and chopsticks, and the rest have to carry incense paper as offerings.
After worshiping all the old people and setting off cannons, we finally arrived at Grandpa Zhang An's place.
The weather today is very nice. Although it is still gloomy, it does not rain, so everyone can have a collective picnic on the mountain.
This is a local custom. Firstly, it expresses longing and respect for the ancestors. Secondly, it also means a family outing.
But if it rains, you won't be able to go. You can only go up to the mountain to worship with a few people and then go back home to have dinner.
In the morning, Zhang An and his team had already cut out the grass dam here. Now there is a flat land here, which is very convenient for everyone to have a picnic.
The old man and the men gathered around a table, while the women and children gathered together at the same table.
Everyone had a great time eating, which completely diluted the gloomy atmosphere of the Qingming festival.
This may be the main meaning of the rise of this custom at that time, to remember without being sad, so that the deceased and the reborn can witness the rise and fall of the family together.
By the time everyone had finished eating, it was already getting late.
Everyone helped pack away the pots and pans, kowtowed to their ancestors one by one, extinguished the mountain fire, and checked that there were no fire starters before the whole family went down the mountain to go home.
There have been too many accidents caused by mountain fires due to ancestor worship during the Qingming Festival, so in the past few years, various places have been focusing on forest fire prevention.
As the saying goes, set fire to the mountain and sit on the bottom of the prison.
Back home, everyone gets together in the morning and disperses again in the evening.
The hostesses of each house will wash the pots and pans, and then sort out their own things together.
After buying things with everyone’s share of the money in the morning, they have to tally the accounts with each family in the evening.
The missing parts should be put together, and the extra should be divided.
As a result, there are still more than 20 yuan left today, and each family only has more than one yuan.
So Zhang An suggested that we either separate them and leave them at Fourth Grandpa's place, and then we can go shopping together next year.
Anyway, each family doesn't have much.
After everything was settled, everyone went back to their homes.
It is more convenient for Zhang An's family to be in the village.
There are many families in the village, and some branches have moved out to other villages, but every year they bring their families with them.
This is probably the day that everyone pays most attention to at the end of the year.
Even though Tomb-Sweeping Day was included as a legal holiday in later generations, fewer people organized ancestor worship.
As soon as the Qingming Festival passes, the rapeseed flowers all over the mountains are in full bloom.
Many of the cherry trees on the mountain have already entered the flowering period and have produced small cherries. A few days ago, the mountain was covered with snow-white, but now there are not many cherry blossoms in full bloom.
After more than a month of waiting, the cherries will be on the market.
I will have a car this year, so it will be easy to deal with the cherries in the space.
Zhang An has always felt that so many things are wasted in space.
We still have to find time so that more people can enjoy such a good thing.
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