Ten No Friends

The sky leaves the sun and the moon, the Buddha leaves the scriptures, and the people leave the grass and roots.

People leave their children and grandchildren to prepare for old age, and grass leaves its fibrous roots to wait for the coming spring.

…

Throughout my life, my parents, who are farmers, have been fighting unremittingly against weeds in the crop fields.

Although it was a war that could never be won, in my memory, my parents never seemed to have too many weeds in the face of "wildfires that never burn out, and spring breezes that grow again." Complaints, and sometimes even in small talk, they will suddenly say:

"Hey! The bitter vine in our radish field seems to have disappeared in the past few years."

When saying these words, there seems to be a trace of nostalgia for this weed, as if talking about an old friend who has not been in contact for a long time.

The bitter vine in the mouth of my parents is a local weed. The scientific name is not clear. The flavonoid is the local dialect name.

The flowers of this weed are colorful and look like morning glory, which is really beautiful.

The root system of the bitter vine is particularly developed, and the stem is soft, like a morning glory, it will twine and spread when it encounters crops, and it has strong vitality.

I remember that we were leveling the land once. The sun was scorching and the heat was unbearable. When I was upset, I don’t know when a dark cloud came from the sky and covered the sun. Small clouds cast The shadow just fell on the area where I worked. Just when I was lucky enough to enjoy the shade, I saw countless clouds rising one after another from the southern horizon, filling the entire sky in an instant. Seeing this scene, my mother said: "The rain in the south will not come. If it comes, it will make a river. Come back quickly!"

Before my mother could finish her words, the wind suddenly started to blow so hard that we couldn't even use the shovel in the ground anymore. Before I had time to get it, I ran home, hurriedly and slowly, but I was still soaked in the heavy rain on the way.

The heavy rain poured down for two full hours. Just as my mother said, the water everywhere turned into rivers. After the heavy rain, it turned into moderate rain, and in the evening it became heavy rain. It was not until the next day that it turned into light rain, and it continued to rain all day long. Just this rain, in my drought-stricken hometown, almost exceeded the rainfall in previous years, or even more.

After the sun came up, the fields were soaked and people could not enter at all. It was not until a week later that I remembered the shovel that had fallen in the field and hurried to look for it. When I went to the place, I saw that it was only a few days ago. I didn’t come, but there were overgrown weeds everywhere, and there was no sign of a shovel anywhere. I was worried that the shovel had been taken away by someone else.

After searching carefully, I found that the entire shovel handle was entangled with bitter vines, and the trumpet flowers on it were blooming brilliantly.

But if we talk about the most vigorous and common weed in the local area, it is the weed called ice grass in the dialect. This ice grass is also like the bitter vine, mainly relying on the root system to reproduce. There is a main root that goes deep into the ground and extends flat and endlessly. On each node of this main root, tender green shoots will grow out of the ground and grow in the wind.

The focus of "green grass sprouts" here refers to this kind of weed.

It’s late in the year, and during the New Year, northern China is still a cold winter scene with “thousands of miles of ice and thousands of miles of snow falling”, but the ice grass that has smelled the breath of spring has already eagerly emerged from the ground. Growing up in the ice and snow.

I guess this is the reason why it is called "ice grass". Through the name, you can really feel this grass's desire for life and its tenacity of vitality!

Anyone who has ever been hungry knows that starvation often occurs in winter and spring of the year. Of course, this season is also the most difficult for animals, especially sheep grazing in the wild. .

Due to the cold climate in northern China, all vegetation in the northern wilderness has stopped growing before winter, and the sporadic green that grows on various hills in summer and autumn has long been shoveled away by people. Er Jing was carried home and used as fuel for the kang.

After one winter, these bare mountains and ridges were "sweeped" countless times by sheep day after day. In winter and spring, people and animals are faced with the embarrassment of being without food. Even the lambs that forage for grass all day in the wild may only eat enough dry weeds to fill their mouths. Teeth gapped. In addition, the ewes are about to give birth again at this time, and there is really a lack of grass and sheep. Every year, lambs and ewes that cannot survive die on the way home.

In line with the famous saying "persistence is victory", as long as these lambs and ewes can persist until the day when the ice grass breaks out of the ground, it means that the "green" of their lives has arrived .

These ice grasses that grew up on the withered yellow background of the Loess Plateau have truly become the pioneers of the resurrection of the entire living world. These few green dots like stars not only show their tenacious vitality in the ice and snow, She also brings hope of life to other animals.

No wonder that on the barren loess high slopes, the farmers who have experienced many vicissitudes of life have experienced a severe winter. When the Spring Festival comes, they have to put on bright red and purple costumes to play with social fire and step on the fire. Stilts, land boating. Here the gongs and drums are noisy, and the lions are playing; there is peaceful singing and dancing, and they are dancing yangko. In the beautiful songs of the elder girl and the younger daughter-in-law singing "New Year is coming in the first month, and the green grass buds are rising", the wrinkles on their faces are like the loess plateau. Under the pale yellow sunshine of early spring, the faces of the old men and aunts in the ravines are filled with longing for spring and longing for future life.

For the sheep that have eaten dry grass all winter, when they chew these green grass buds that are still a little tender and slightly shy because they have just sneaked out of the ground, it is a great feeling. The sweet taste is no less than that of Sun Dasheng secretly eating flat peach fruit.

Although the ice grass at this time is still a bit sparse and can only be eaten by the sheep, its sweetness and nutrition are unparalleled.

When I was herding sheep when I was a child, I found that when the sheep eat such rare and delicious tender grass, they often eat it in large quantities. No sheep will carefully eat all the tender grass under their feet. I was eating and rushing forward while eating.

Even if the front is gone, there is no possibility of going back and "sweeping" it again. The so-called "a good horse never looks back" is also applicable to the sheep.

Not knowing the whole story, I asked my mother when I came back. What she said made me suddenly enlightened:

"If the big sheep in the front have all eaten, then the little sheep in the back will be eaten." What to eat!”

I was impressed by my mother’s answer. But I had a new question, and I asked my mother:

"I found that after the entire flock passed, the sweet young grass was still not eaten up?"

Mother The answer once again subverted my three views:

"When you shovel weeds, don't remove them by their roots, and cut them all off, don't kill them all."

Seeing that I still didn't understand why, my mother asked me:

"Why do the herdsmen on the grassland want to change places?"

Of course I know, is it just to let the grassland recuperate? But my mother told a true story that contained a deeper truth.

It is said that there is a family named Wang in our neighboring village, and the man is nicknamed "You Gourd". It is said that he always carries a gourd on his back all day long, which contains edible oil.

When he was working in his own field, whenever he found weeds with small root systems that thrived on grass seeds, he would ruthlessly uproot them to avoid future troubles. But if he encounters weeds such as bitter vine, bitter mugwort, iceweed, etc. that rely on root systems to reproduce and whose roots can penetrate several meters underground, he will open the gourd, pour out the clear oil, and apply it on the cut surfaces of these weeds. . At that time, there were no herbicides, agrochemicals and other pesticides, and as long as the "wounds" of these weeds were stained with a little clear oil, these weeds would rot like rot, until the entire weed became rotten. The roots of the grass rotted away, and the entire weed was reduced to nothing. Therefore, it is really difficult to find a weed in every piece of his land.

The final result of not having any weeds was, of course, that Wang Hulu himself accumulated a fortune of tens of thousands, and also filled up the two-bedroom wives and concubines in the backyard. However, until Wang Hulu himself was over seventy years old, the two-bedroom wives and concubines Nor did he bear a son or a daughter.

A hundred years later, every piece of land that he once used to be exquisite and picturesque was overgrown with weeds and luxuriant grass. A breeze blew, and various birds nesting in the grass sang softly. , chasing and playing...

Some things are really beyond our scope of cognition, but if we think about it carefully, it makes sense.

As for the fact that edible oil can kill weeds, it was unheard of before, but if you think about it carefully, this is most consistent with the principle of all things in nature. Cooking oil itself comes from plants, but it kills plants.

Everything in the world is the same. Your gravedigger is in your pregnancy. Looking around, he is probably the only one in this world who can "suppress" all the powerful fathers. An "unfilial" son.

The ancient poem "boil the beans and burn the beans, and the beans weep in the cauldron." Thinking from another perspective, it is most consistent with common sense. Fortresses are often breached from the inside first.

My father told me that the weeds just weren't growing where they were supposed to. But even if they grow in your fields and infringe on your interests, you can eradicate them, but they will never be "extinct". Moreover, these weeds and wild vegetables have saved countless lives in the years when people starved to death. People cannot heal their scars and forget about the pain. They must know how to be grateful and must not repay kindness with enmity.

Later I saw a report that Yuan Longping, the father of rice hybridization, first successfully cultivated indica hybrid rice after discovering a male wild rice plant in a swamp.

People nowadays remember Yuan Longping, but who knows that the rice you are eating now are all the descendants of that male wild rice plant.

If this male wild rice tree also met the king gourd at that time, what would be its ending? What will be the fate of us humans?

Therefore, when my father eradicates these weeds that rely on deep roots to reproduce their offspring, he often leaves a small section in the deepest part of the ground, trying not to cut the weeds up to the roots.

He told me that at such a deep place, the grass may not grow again this year, but its life is still there, which is the best of both worlds.

One of his mantras is:

The sky leaves the sun and the moon, the Buddha leaves the scriptures, and the people leave the grass and roots.

People leave their children and grandchildren to prepare for old age, and grass leaves its fibrous roots to wait for the coming spring.

As for those weeds that thrive on grass seeds, my father would often intentionally leave one in the field and let it grow wildly, turning a blind eye. He would also laugh and say:

"It The grass seeds can leave me some work next year!”

Yes! As long as people have something to do every year, they can also do something active, what a blessing it is!

As for this so-called karma, it really depends on how you understand it.

There is a local saying that people who are too clean often lack children and girls. The so-called saying "Those who have no children are praised for their cleanliness, and those who have no parents are quick to be filial", which more or less means this.

If we reverse the causal relationship, the truth still seems to be true. Even if such people have children, after old age, they will either be paralyzed and unable to send urine out, or they will often leave when they die. Deluolian (dialect: unfavorable, sloppy) is very good.

I wonder if you have noticed that all those who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease are smart people when they were young.

Nature is fair. If she closes a door for you, she will definitely open a window for you; or at different stages of your life, she will let you give up first or get first. It's a bit of a waste, but the final result is definitely in line with the energy conservation principle of physics. The only difference is just the reversal of the order relationship.

A cousin from this village is over 70 years old and is still alive.

This man was quite handsome when he was young. He had thick eyebrows and big eyes like the movie star Leslie Cheung. Especially his upper and lower eyelids had double eyelids, which looked like pig eyes, which made him look even more unique.

His eyes, which are not clearly distinguishable between black and white, give people a hazy feeling that seems to be drunk but not drunk. The ends of the eyes are parallel, and when he smiles, they curve down like a crescent moon. His eyes are full of affection and make people feel relaxed. Ripple. A fortune teller once said that he had peach blossom eyes and that he would have peach blossom eyes all his life.

I was really hit by the fortune teller’s words. This guy just doesn’t know how to please women, and he is so clever that he can do all the farm work, including killing pigs and sheep. He was very good at digging cellars and building houses.

Now that I think about it, I guess "Pan Donkey and Deng Xiaoxian" conquered women. He can account for four things, but the only regret is that he lacks a little "Deng Tong".

But having said that, in that era when everyone was poor, people really didn’t value money that much. If you don’t believe it, if you look at the modern world, you will find that in today’s society, the rich love money most. , poor people really don’t care about money.

I found that people have different levels of desire. Before the bottom desire is realized, those so-called lofty ideals are meaningless to him.

Therefore, the rural women at that time were really simple. What they valued was that he had a lot of strength, a flexible mind, could do any farm work, and had a good temper, and he always smiled when he met everyone. . Therefore, all the women in the same village who were about the same age as him (in dialect, about the same age), and whose belts were a little looser, eventually fell into his trap and boarded his pirate ship, allowing him to succeed.

Due to style problems, although the man was handsome, his marriage was never settled. Later, someone introduced a girl from a neighboring village who had been a little bit crazy since she was a child. Because the fever was not cured for a long time, it affected her IQ. His parents Seeing the girl like this, he didn't agree with the marriage, but he insisted on marrying her as his wife, and his parents couldn't help it.

His father was so angry that he cursed in the end:

"As soon as you lift your tail, you will see that it is a female and you will want it."

One word Cheng prophecy really answered: There is nothing better than a father who knows his son!

After getting married, his habit of flirting with women did not change at all. He was so angry that his wife's condition became more and more serious, with more and more attacks and longer and longer periods of time. One time, when my daughter-in-law was spreading rice, lamb madness suddenly broke out. She put her hands into the rice pot, and the skin and flesh on her hands were so hot that they fell off the bones. It was terrible to see.

But even so, although the red flags at his home were not red, the colorful flags outside were still flying in the wind. Today I had an affair with this woman and was beaten to a bloody head by her husband. Tomorrow I climbed over the wall of someone else's house and was bitten by a dog on my leg. The situation was always going on. My wife was so angry that she jumped off a cliff while working and died.

The woman’s family insisted on suing the authorities and sent him to jail. For the sake of their six children, the relatives jointly issued a guarantee saying that the woman had fallen off a cliff accidentally due to lamb’s disease.

Since ancient times, Chinese people have wronged the dead for the sake of the living. This woman has been pitiful all her life, and she ended up like this in the end.

It’s true that a dog can’t change its habit of eating shit. Such a big change happened in the family. For people, once the daughter-in-law dies, there is less restraint.

He was also a very powerful man, and later he let someone else's wife conceive him and gave birth to his son. The child's eyes were exactly the same as his, and now he has grown up and is a playboy.

In the end, he started to cheat again and got together with his own brother-in-law. His brother was an honest man, but he got angry and committed suicide. His sister-in-law also remarried and moved away. , and finally fell into a trap.

He gave birth to three girls and three boys. When his eldest son got married, it was the most stressful period of family planning. In order to give birth to a son, his eldest son hid in Tibet and gave birth to children one after another. She gave birth to seven children, but they are all granddaughters. They are all as beautiful as flowers and jade, and they are called the Seven Fairies.

Subsequently, the remaining five children got married one after another and flourished. There were no less than twenty grandchildren, but there was no boy.

He was so angry that he went to have his fortune told. He was told that the fundamental reason was that he had had too many other people's wives and daughters, which had harmed his children and grandchildren, and that was why he ended up like this.

Everything has a cause and effect, and blessings and misfortunes will be reciprocated. It is just a matter of time.

In our hometown, it is important to note that the lusher the vegetation on whose ancestral grave is, the stronger the descendants of that family will be. Some things are really weird. Sometimes two graves not far apart have almost the same soil quality and orientation, but one grave is covered with lush grass, while the other is almost barren. You should go to the corresponding grave to inquire about their descendants, as the saying goes. Said:

Money is in the door,

Children are in the grave.

The descendants of the tomb with lush vegetation are really prosperous, but the grave of Wang Hulu mentioned above is barren of grass, even though the weeds in his land were already luxuriant.

Just like what my father said, these grasses once again did not grow where they should.

Now think about it, the relationship between us humans and animals and plants, is it a friend, an opponent, or an enemy?

And I can guarantee that although my parents have struggled with these grasses for a lifetime, they are just competitors and have never become enemies.

And when my parents return to the dust one day, these grasses also accepted them, reconciled with them, and even developed into friends, growing on their graves, in the cold On the bright moon night, I spent every lonely night with my parents.

My parents worked hard and struggled with weeds all their lives, but they always left a glimmer of hope for the weeds. These grasses also knew how to be grateful and flourished on the grave where they were allowed to grow freely.

And I found that these grasses are like relatives. In the past few years, they were this kind of grasses, but after a few years, there were no traces of these grasses, and they were replaced by several other types of grasses. .

A few years ago, a weed similar to an orchid bloomed in our ancestral graves. The flowers were blue with a hint of lavender. In October, when the autumn wind blows, the flowers sway in the wind, as if they are in a sea of ??flowers...

In recent years, small flowers similar to lilies have grown, slightly browned, swaying in the breeze, as if To convey to us descendants that my parents are in another world and everything is fine.

Every time I go to the grave, when I kneel down in front of my parents’ graves, the soft green grass covers the entire graveyard like a blanket. When I kneel down and worship my parents, I also express my deep gratitude to these grasses. , thanks to them, my mother, who loves flowers all her life, is never lonely in the company of these little flowers.

Jiang Chengzi·Dreams on the night of the 20th day of the first lunar month of Yimao

Su Shi of the Song Dynasty

Ten years of life and death are uncertain. Without thinking. Unforgettable. Thousands of miles of lonely tomb, no place to talk about desolation. Even if we meet each other, we should not know each other, our faces are covered with dust and our temples are like frost.

When night comes, I suddenly return home with a deep dream. Small Xuan window. Dressing up. They looked at each other without words, only a thousand lines of tears. It is expected that the broken part of the intestines will be cut off every year. On a bright moonlit night, there will be short pines.