Chapter 6 first quarter

From Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, to Xindu County, which belongs to Chengdu Prefecture, from the north gate, most people say that it is forty miles, but in fact it is only a little over thirty miles.The road is winding and winding in the extremely flat field. Although it is a dirt road less than five feet wide, only two rows of stone slabs are paved on the right side of the road; Straw sandals are almost difficult to walk at half a step, and on sunny days, the mud turns into a layer of floating dust. When people walk by, it is rare that the heel of the shoe does not rise a few feet; but it is the North Sichuan Avenue.It stretches to the north until Guangyuan, a border county in Sichuan, and then Ningqiang Prefecture and Hanzhong Prefecture in Shaanxi Province. It used to be the post road in the capital of Beijing.And from Guangyuan to the west, it is Bikou, a large town in Sichuan and Gansu, and then Jiezhou and Wenxian in Gansu Province. This road is the only way for goods entering and leaving the northwestern provinces.

The road is so flat, but I don’t know when the high carts with four horses have disappeared in the whole of Sichuan, and now there is only a kind of wheelbarrow that is pushed by two handles; There are only mules and horses and loaders, and there are only sedan chairs carried by eight people, four people, three people, and two people. In the past, most officials and scholars who traveled between Beijing and Sichuan took this route.Especially the appointment of the governor of education and politics.In addition to making donations, officials in prefectures and counties along the road have to repair roads.In this way, Dachuan North Road is not only the same as Chuandong Road, but also has spacious and large official residences by station, and is often eroded by farmers as a road: after all, unlike other roads, it is only a passage, but only There is a two-foot-wide stone slab left for people to walk on, and the road is still kept to a five-foot-wide road.

The road is so important, so at every moment of the day, regardless of rain or shine, you can see herds of camels carrying all kinds of goods, mixed in four-person official sedan chairs, three-person Dingjiao sedan chairs, and two-person sedan chairs. , and between the bearers carrying luggage, a series of coming, a series of going.In the midst of this flow of people, occasionally a skinny horse, with a string of loud bells under its neck, carrying a young man in urgent suit with a backpack and an umbrella, gallops past, and you will know that this is the person delivering the documents at the post station. up.But in recent years, because of the telegraph, the number of paperwork has gradually decreased.

Just between Chengdu and Xindu, exactly 20 miles away, in the wide fields embroidered with Jintian, there is a town that is neither too big nor too small.From afar, you can see, under the shade of some big dark trees, a pile of gray-black tile houses lying like rocks under the dust curtain of the road; from the first house to the last house, they are all tightly packed Then, there is no gap.Among the gray and black tiled houses, there are several majestic buildings protruding high like the peaks in the sea. Although you can only see some yellow glazed and blue glazed tile surfaces, you must guess that this must be the key. The Emperor's Temple, the Fire God Temple, or the main hall and stage of any palace or whatever.

The streets in the town are naturally paved with stone slabs, and of course the wheelbarrows of the rooster carts have made many deep grooves to show the frequent traffic, not to mention the manure of camels and the bagasse discarded by pedestrians.At both ends of the town, there are no extremely dirty and shabby thatched cottages for the poor, and no dirty grass and pig manure covering the land and stone slabs.The stench must be pungent, and the ragged children must be playing here, and the poor women must set up some stalls selling fruits and cheap pastries, and they will sit behind the stalls and chat with their neighbors.

However, there are also some considerable shops on the town street, which is completely different from the situation outside the town.For example, the Yunji Inn next to the Huoshen Temple is not an official residence, but its grandeur is no less than that of an official residence. There is a restaurant with three bays at the entrance, and an empty dam when you enter. stable.Going in again, there is a vast sedan hall, which can hold more than a dozen large sedan chairs.Passing through the sedan chair hall, there are six guest rooms in the east wing and six guest rooms in the west wing, above which is the five-bay Shangguan room.Behind the Shangguan’s house, there is a small courtyard dam, and a short wall separates it from the other courtyard at the back; on the white plaster surface of the short wall, there is a color painting of the three stars of fortune, wealth and longevity. Although it is as old and bleak as the whole house, it expresses It is already old, but the remaining traces of youth have not been completely wiped out.