Chapter 4 March three

Every year on the third day of the third month of the lunar calendar, people in Maqiao eat black rice. They use the juice of a kind of weed to dye the rice black, so that their mouths are all black.That is to say, on the same day, all the people had to sharpen their knives, and the sound of hooting from every household was earth-shattering, and the leaves all over the mountain were trembling with fright.In addition to sharpening hatchets, kitchen knives, sickles and guillotines, every family must have a waist knife, which is also sharpened. The cold light fluctuates, dances, and explodes on the edge of the blade, arousing people's certain fierce thoughts.These knives used to sleep in the rust, but now they wake up brightly one by one, and they are full of life in the hands of the barbarians, the barbarians, and the barbarians, making people unconsciously keep a little distance from each other.If people hadn't held their knives tightly by the hilts, they would all have seemed to go their own way, whizzing and whizzing through doors, and pounced on their respective targets, doing things that would surprise people--sooner or later they would.

I can regard this custom as a ceremony for them to prepare for farming at the beginning of the year, and it is not associated with fighting.But what makes little sense is that when preparing for farming, one should mainly sharpen hoes and plowshares, not why sharpen waist knives. As soon as the knife shines, spring is here. March three is the vibration of the air on the blade.