Ordinarily, the sun and the moon move leisurely like a wooden cart with iron hoops pulled by oxen. Famine, plague and sudden turmoil are like an oxcart whose wheels got stuck in the mud, or the wheels were stuck, or the axles were broken and forced to move.
The cart stalled; after a long or short period of tossing, or replacing a new axle, the ox cart rolled slowly and creaking on the deeply rutted dirt road. Bai Jiaxuan sat on the bed of his father and his father.
On the raw lacquered wooden chair where his father had sat, he was holding the white copper hookah that his father and his father's father had held while snoring and puffing. He was standing in the courtyard looking at the towering Nanshan Mountain shrouded in mist, and he was thinking the same thing at night.
, he couldn’t help but think about this especially when he had finished his cigarette addiction, drank enough tea, and was lying on the empty earthen bed. He had detached himself from specific single events such as the New Year, the plague, and the farmers’ cooperative, and entered a kind of
Thinking about the regularity of life and people. No matter what kind of disaster the dead people died, they are actually like a broken axle after falling into a pothole; the living people cannot always regret the benefits of the broken axle, because no matter what kind of disaster it is, the dead person is like a broken axle after falling into a pothole.
It was useless. He had to replace the axle with a new one so that the ox-cart could climb up the pothole and continue on the road. He walked through the village lane with a cane and a bent waist. He heard a woman crying for her son from a certain house.
Or crying in the sad voice of her husband, not only does she not sympathize with them, but she calls them bastards in her heart because no one can guarantee absolute perfection, no matter father, mother, son, daughter, or husband, and it is impossible for a family to be together forever; because
No matter how good a father, mother, son, daughter or husband is, they will never reunite once they are killed. Even if you don’t eat or drink and want to die and cry to your heart’s content, it doesn’t matter how good or strong a broken axle is.
The axle of an axle is always worn down and broken, so the dead should not express special sadness. Bai Jiaxuan was also deeply saddened by the death of Xiancao, so that for a long time he always felt that something was missing; it was definitely not just
It was the warm flesh that she carefully slid down his legs every night, the rustling sound of her walking in the courtyard, the smell that spread to the stove in the courtyard, or the
Another indescribable feeling that is different from images, sounds, and breaths, all of which are definitely non-existent. His superman lies in his ability to come to the extraordinary conclusion that the grass jelly is also a broken axle. Bai Jiaxuan is thinking
When faced with the mysteries of life, I always think of a mantra that has been passed down since ancient times: the population of Bailu Village can never exceed one thousand. Whenever it does, disaster will definitely occur, and the population will suddenly shrink back to less than a thousand.
For the first time in his life, he experienced the process of population shrinkage and was able to verify that mantra. From doubt to belief, there was a pair of monitoring eyes in the dark sky above Bailu Village.
Controls the reproduction and density of the population in Bailu Village and even the entire Bailu Plains...
Bai Jiaxuan agreed with his son Xiaowu's move to add to the genealogy, which was when he came to the conclusion that a dead person is like a broken axis.
Bai Xiaowu took the sole responsibility of starting the sacred mission of renewing the family tree. He invited monks from the Sanguan Temple to chant sutras and salvation for every soul who was eligible to be included in the family tree. The simple procedure was to follow the seniority of the two surnames Bailu from high to low.
, the peers are arranged in order according to their age. First, the son or grandson of the deceased will light three purple incense sticks and insert them into the incense burner on behalf of the whole family. Then he will lead the filial sons of the deceased, male and female, to bow their heads three times, kneel in front of the coffin table and bow their heads in silence.
Standing and waiting; Bai Xiaowu greased the tip of the brush in the inkstone, hung his wrist to fill in the name of the deceased into the red square, then put down the brush and bowed three times to the deceased; the filial sons kowtowed repeatedly and left the ancestral hall; five small groups
The musicians played melodious music when the filial son walked into the ancestral hall. The music played until the whole ceremony was over and the filial son left the ancestral hall. The monk began to ring the wooden fish after the filial son bowed three times and kowtowed three times.
When the monk closed his mouth and stopped knocking the wooden fish, the musician continued to play. Bai Xiaowu solemnly and respectfully filled in all the dead men over the age of 16 and the women who married to Bailu Village.
However, an unmarried woman in her tribe is not qualified to occupy a red square even if she dies at the age of twenty. This sacred activity, which involves every household, does not have any flaws or mistakes, which naturally improves Bai Xiaowu's standing among the tribe.
prestige here.
Bai Jiaxuan only came to the ancestral hall when he unfolded the family tree scroll at the beginning and rolled it up again at the end, and knelt down with all the clan members. At the end of the ceremony, Bai Jiaxuan saw the relaxed expressions of the clan members from the eyebrows of each man and woman.
So he said to the tribesmen with excitement: "You can't let the oxcart sit in the pit, you have to let the wheels roll on the road."
Lu Zilin never entered the ancestral hall. His family had no souls to be saved, and it was not the reason why he did not need to write a genealogy. Bai Xiaowu did not forget this point when he fully described this complicated ceremony to his father at home: "Before displaying the scrolls and scrolls, I gave them to him
After talking about the time, the man still hasn't shown his face." Bai Jiaxuan said: "You treat him as a person and just run around to count him. Whether he comes or not doesn't matter. I think that man was acting arrogantly all the time.
It’s no good to be crazy when people are crazy, and it’s frivolous when dogs are crazy…”
Bai Jiaxuan began to get his third son Xiaoyi married. He instructed Xiaowu to invite a matchmaker, and then ordered Xiaowu's wife to cook four dishes, warm a pot of wine, and said: "You have to run on the way down.
." After the matchmaker had eaten and drank, she happily ran to the bride's family to say what she should say and do what she should do. Bai Jiaxuan handed over all the large and small matters that his family should prepare to Xiaowu to handle.
The first thing is to scouring grain and grinding flour. The stone mill can only grind three buckets of wheat a day. It must be started early, and it must be estimated that the sun often does not shine in the twelfth lunar month, and the inability to scouring the grain will delay the possibility of grinding flour. This simple matter
The job was left to Lu San, who was not very flexible, and the rabbit boy took over the management of the livestock. Young people often couldn't bear the loneliness of the slowly turning stone mill. Bai Jiaxuan corrected Xiaowu's arrangement: "
Let Xiaoyi grind his face. His temperament must be tempered in his eyes."
The third son, Xiaoyi, stared at his elder brother Xiaowu's assignment: "I am delivering manure, hauling soil, and rolling flowers. What job is not more important than grinding flour? It's too confusing for me to ask me to grind flour and turn it around."
When the harmony of beating chimes and chanting sutras in the ancestral hall stopped, Xiaoyi and Tuwa sent all the manure accumulated in the enclosure to the wheat field, and pulled back seven or eight loads of loess from the trench, drying it until the manure was vacated.
On the field, after drying, use a cart to store the dry soil in the earth shed.
The autumn rain and plague delayed the storage of dry soil. He and Rabbit drove the ox cart to the trench, often making the first tracks on the frost-covered road and spreading the wet soil to the enclosure to dry.
The two of them walked into the kitchen with hungry stomachs to eat two steamed buns that were browned and soft, and then stepped into the cotton gin room and stepped on the cotton gin. Xiaowu's wife, who was cooking under the stove, baked a bunch of steamed buns in the stove.
Let the person who is hungry after working get a tip first, or you can stop the mouth of the child who climbed out of bed and wanted to eat the steamed bun. She joked to the rabbit who was devouring it: "Rabbit, you are so happy with Xiaoyi.
What are you doing, Xiaoyi, because you want to get a wife? What are you doing?" The rabbit understood that this was a joke and smiled nonchalantly. Xiaoyi only focused on chewing and chewing, ignoring his sister-in-law's teasing. The two of them had a tacit understanding and harmony.
Jumping and trampling the cotton gin happily.
Xiaoyi couldn't accept Xiaowu's division of labor between him and Tuwa, so he went to his father to defend himself. Bai Jiaxuan said, "I asked you to transfer to Mo Dao." Xiaoyi was stunned for a moment and stared. Bai Jiaxuan remained calm.
Said: "You are about to get married. Once you get married, you will be an adult, not a child anymore. You have to temper your wild nature in the mill."
Xiaoyi was imprisoned in the mill day after day from morning to night, following the back of the ox or the red horse, picking up the ground wheat flour on the grinding table, pouring it into the basket, and then shaking the handle, bang bang bang clang The monotonous sound made his ears numb. Lu San walked in, clenched the handle numbly and said, "You go out and play." The stubborn Xiaoyi pushed Lu San out of the mill door and said, "I'm going to grind in the mill road. Grind me into you."
Bai Jiaxuan calmly grasped the progress of various preparations. In his opinion, marrying a wife is just completing a procedure, and getting engaged is an important and laborious part; whether he can find a suitable spouse for his son is not the key. Marriage is preceded by engagement. Bai Jiaxuan has studied all the families of his peers and juniors in Bailu Village in his spare time, and concluded that the key to whether all men succeed or not lies in women. If a smart and capable man meets a woman who does not know how to manage finances and housekeeping, he will be troubled throughout his life. Living a miserable life; a man with benevolence and morality is paired with a slimy woman, and he will never be able to stand up in front of others for the rest of his life; let alone the kind of things that Hei Wa picks up like a gangster, Hei Wa If there were rules, a woman would definitely not fall into the trap of a bandit. When he engaged Xiaoyi, he focused on his son's temperament. He had to choose a woman who was well-educated and a little lively, in order to make up for Xiaoyi's stubbornness. Bai Jiaxuan had a stubborn nature. After repeated comparisons and identifications among the five or six people introduced by the matchmaker, Bai Jiaxuan asked relatives and friends to inquire without telling the matchmaker, and finally settled on a woman from Xikang Village. The woman pushed her mother in a trolley to Mr. Leng When Bai Jiaxuan was in the traditional Chinese medicine clinic, Bai Jiaxuan observed her every move and every word and deed in the inner room. The most satisfactory and perfect daughter-in-law among all the daughters-in-law. When making an engagement to Xiaowen, the main consideration was that the family was in urgent need of someone, so he made an appointment with a strong woman who was two years older than Xiaowen, but other aspects were very average. When making an engagement to Xiaowu, It turned out that Mr. Leng asked someone to propose a marriage, and he had no choice. However, this daughter-in-law was not too out of shape and could take care of the scene, but she was not very smart; only the daughter-in-law he had booked for his third son Xiaoyi was a An impeccable woman.
The wedding held on the third day of the first lunar month inspired the enthusiasm of the whole village. This was the first sedan chair to dance in the village alley after the plague. The joyful music played by the suona broke away the desolation in the corner of the dead alley, a kind of heart-wrenching feeling. The exciting melody of life resounded in everyone's heart. Because the son of a highly respected patriarch was getting married, almost every family of the Bailu family had someone to help. Lu Zilin became the natural butler of the wedding. He is shrewd and smart. He was free and easy, and directed the entire wedding in an orderly and orderly manner. He joked and joked with the man who was the deacon and the woman who helped from time to time, and his laughter showed enthusiasm and ease. As the master, Bai Jiaxuan should not give instructions to anyone. He can only give instructions inside and outside. He relied on the head deacon Lu Zilin. He said to Lu Zilin at the beginning: "Brother, I gave you the whole set." Lu Zilin said: "Don't worry, go and smoke the hookah. I have a good opportunity to have a drink today."
The most unusual thing about this wedding ceremony was the arrival of Mr. Zhu and his wife. Mrs. Zhu Bai accompanied her mother, Mrs. Bai Zhao, who had endless topics to talk about. Mr. Zhu was welcomed by Bai Jiaxuan and took a seat in his bedroom in the west room of the upper room. The two of them When they sit together, there is never any greeting, no polite politeness or excessive humility. They start talking about the real things they want to say as soon as they take a sip of tea. Mr. Zhu, who does not smoke or drink, took a sip of light tea and said: "Xiaowen wants to go back to where he was before. ." Bai Jiaxuan did not respond.