Chapter 8 6. Wanzhu Street and Chenghuang Temple

Not far from Zijin Primary School, there is a famous small street called Wanzhu Street.When I say it's famous, it's for the kids who live in that area.At that time, among us elementary school students, it was fashionable to collect match trademarks, and Wanzhu Street was the most prosperous trading place.As soon as you walk on this street, you can see children bustling with each other, holding all kinds of match trademarks in their hands, shouting as they walk: "Shall I change? Do I want to change?" Be careful when exchanging, because some people use other trademarks to pretend to be match trademarks , I was fooled.There are also some vendors on the street, one of them is an old man who sells the most varieties and has the hottest business. I often linger beside his stall.Ordinary trademarks are very cheap, you can buy a pack for a penny, and exquisite or rare ones cost a few cents, which was very expensive in my opinion at the time.The old man agreed to exchange it with other things. I have several sets of ivory mahjong in my house, and I have replaced them one after another.At that time, I collected more than 100 kinds of trademarks, some of which were peeled off from matchboxes, but most of them were brand new and could not be seen on matchboxes used in daily use. They may come directly from various match factories, or they may be specially designed for Collected and printed.

At a younger age, what I collected were candy wrappers. Apart from the ones left after I ate them, a large number were brand new and unused.When I was young, I also collected stamps, but my grades were mediocre and I gave up halfway.Childhood collecting is a game, not the same thing as adult collecting, which mixes fetishes, possessiveness, and vanity.I don't mean to be disparaging when I say this, collecting is precisely the most innocent way of satisfying these desires.Perhaps my desires were not strong enough, perhaps they had other means of satisfaction, in short, in adulthood, I did not develop any kind of taste for collecting.

When I was young, apart from Wanzhu Street, another place that made me linger was the Temple of the City God.Town God's Temple is the center of Shanghai's old city, very close to my home, and it takes only a few minutes to walk there.It is very lively there, with a variety of sales stalls, some selling small creatures such as crickets, goldfish, turtles, birds, etc., as well as various small toys and snacks. It is a paradise for children.The Chinese New Year is especially lively, just like going to a temple fair, products that are not usually seen are displayed, and the voices of people, firecrackers, whistles of blowing balloons, and the sound of pulling bells rang together.Visiting the Town God's Temple is a must-have program for us every year. If you don't visit it, it doesn't feel like Chinese New Year.

Breeding and collecting, two common inclinations of children, represent perhaps, respectively, the natural and the historical nature of man.For me, Wanzhu Street is a sacred place for collecting, and Chenghuang Temple is a paradise for breeding.When I was young, I raised goldfish, tadpoles, and crickets, and silkworms were my favorite.At that time, many children liked to raise silkworms, and we affectionately called silkworms baby silkworms.Every spring, you can buy newly hatched young silkworms in Chenghuang Temple. I will definitely buy some and keep them in paper boxes.Mulberry leaves are also bought, you can buy a small handful for a penny, and replace them with fresh ones every one or two days.Serving silkworm babies, there are things that need to be concerned about every day, and there are surprises every day.Watching them eat hard, grow up little by little, and their bodies gradually become brighter. Build a hill with straw and watch them climb up to spin silk and make cocoons. This process is really enjoyable.The cocoons change from thin to thick, like gauze curtains at the beginning, you can still see the silkworms busy inside, but gradually they disappear.That was the end of the good times, for after that one had to wait patiently until one day a small gap appeared in the cocoon, which gradually widened and the moth emerged.The next thing is even less interesting. The inevitable fate of moths is to mate, lay eggs, and die.Although I always save the eggs until the following spring, they never hatch into silkworm babies.

In Chenghuang Temple, you can also buy a beetle the size of a grain of rice, called Yang Chong.In fact, I only know its pronunciation, and I guess it is the word for nourishment, because it is said that this kind of insect is a great tonic, and they also specialize in nourishing foods such as lotus seeds and red dates.The way to eat this kind of worms is very special, grab a handful and put them into the mouth alive, and let them crawl down the throat and esophagus into the abdomen.There are students in our class who have eaten like this, but I dare not.I just kept them for fun, put the small paper boxes on the desk during class, and secretly opened the lid to take a look at them from time to time.They have amazing fecundity, put a few in the small cardboard box that contains injections, and a few days later the box will be full.That's the great joy of keeping these little bugs, watching their numbers magically change from day to day.

At the beginning of liberation, there was a theater troupe at the entrance of the Town God's Temple, which specialized in performing big and small plays.Uncle Mao knew the gatekeeper and took me in to watch it once.The venue is small, there is no stage and no seats, the audience all stand and watch.The so-called actors are actually three freaks.A dwarf woman with an enormous head, twice the size of a normal human.The two men are brothers, and their heads are extremely small, half the size of normal people.They all wore flowered clothes, painted their faces with thick paint, and babbled and sang to the sound of gongs and drums.Before long, the troupe was disbanded and replaced by a small zoo with monsters like double-headed snakes on display.Later, I saw the pair of Xiaotou brothers many times, and found that they also lived in Houjialu, and it was said that they had already arranged proper jobs.

Town God's Temple is still a lively place in Shanghai, where there are Jiuqu Bridge and Yu Garden, a Suzhou-style garden, as well as many traditional snack bars and characteristic small shopping malls.However, the temple has long since been demolished, and like many place names today, the Temple of the City God is no longer worthy of its name.When I was a child, the temple was intact, and burning incense candles all year round, filled with smoke.The temple is divided into two floors, with several entrances, for many statues of different origins.The first floor is Yangjian, where Confucianism and Buddhism are eclectic, including the Jade Emperor and Guanyin, of course there is the City God, Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, Guan Gong and so on.The second floor is the Yin Division, the light is very dark, showing the gloomy scene of hell such as the oil pan, and there are white impermanence and black impermanence hidden in the corner.I often went into the temple to play, feeling fearful and excited. Once I stepped in, I regretted it. I didn't dare to look aside. I went through the dimly lit halls one by one, and escaped from another door.Until I moved away from Houjia Road, for twenty years, I often had the same dream. I dreamed that I was lost in the temple, surrounded by countless god statues, and the halls were connected to each other, as if there was no end. No exit, and finally woke up in panic.