Chapter 16 1. When the moon walks, so do I

After losing Aunt Xue, my father thought of the moon in his hometown. My father said that it was a big moon that had caused fierce controversy. My father and I went back by boat.Down the Baihe River from Nanyang, one hundred and twenty miles to the south, there is an ancient city outline, which is Xinye County, where Liu Bei once stationed troops in the Three Kingdoms era.Forty miles further south, at the border between Henan and Hubei, there is a village named Zhang'an, where the ancestors of our old Zhang family lived and thrived. When the passenger ship was chasing the green water away, I didn't hear the howling of the alarm, and I didn't see the black flies with the "red plaster" "buzzing" in the sky, and the sky became blue and clear.The earth also quiets down, showing to a pair of four-year-old eyes its ever-flowing landscape: a yellow ox and a child riding upside down on the ox's back, a shirtless farmer and a hoe on his shoulders, a passing The waterfowl on the surface of the water and the small fish held in its mouth and shaking its head and tail, a donkey ringing a bell and a woman riding on the donkey's back with a flower umbrella all made me feel novel, fresh and excited.At night, the bow of the ship flicked the waves lightly, sailing in the sky and under the stars.Distant barking of dogs came from the village on the shore, and the sound of straggling lone geese flew across the sky.At this time, a big round moon suddenly rises from the bank of the Baihe River. She is as bright as snow and crystal clear as jade, which makes people's hearts flutter.Immediately, the field was covered with frosty silver light, and the willow silk on the river bank became transparent.My father patted my head and said, look, this is the moon in my hometown!

Looking at the bright moon in my hometown, I began to listen to the stories of my ancestors. Father said, long, long ago... So, how many years can the history of our family go back?My father said that our ancestors were not relatives of the emperor, nor were they aristocrats or ministers, so they cannot be seen in historical records; they were not a famous family like my grandfather's family, and there were no chivalrous men, righteous men, wealthy businessmen, and great scholars. Income local annals.My father can only tell me, "Long, long ago", there was a family of "Poguozhang" who was very poor. The three brothers brought a broken pot - it was originally a cast iron pot for worshiping ancestors. The incense burner came to the bank of the Baihe River from a "far, far away place", and built a thatched hut under a big mulberry tree, which became the place where they settled and inhabited.

So, from which "far, far away place" did "Poguozhang" come here?Zhang's clan said: "Ask where my ancestors are? The old pagoda tree in Hongdong, Shanxi." It is also said that Zhang's "blind flow" who ran out of Hongdong County had two petals on his toenail, one petal. The child is big, and the petal is small; there is also a cyan birthmark on the buttocks, which is the anti-counterfeiting seal left by Zhang's ancestors to future generations.My father imitated the rigorous attitude of archaeologists, pinching the little toenails of his children as if he was pinching pieces of paleontological fossils, and took a magnifying glass to look at them, but he couldn't find the little toenails that were divided into two parts. No anti-counterfeiting marks of any color were found either.There is no way to check where the ancestors came from. 

The three brothers of the Zhang family whose origins are unknown are farming during the day and living in a small grass hermitage at night.It is here that the historic debate that unfortunately divided the family took place.  It was a night when I didn’t have a full stomach. The second child was looking forward to the rising moon, and suddenly said: "Brother, look, there is a big sesame cake hanging in the sky!" The boss carefully observed the moon and shook his head. Said: "No, it's just a piece of steamed bread!" The second child said: "The steamed bun is as thin as paper, not enough to fit between our teeth, it should be a sesame seed cake!" The boss said: "A steamed steamed bun can roll half a catty. Shepherd's purse, shepherd's purse in the field can't be rolled, it should be steamed buns!" The third child was riding on a tall mulberry tree branch, staring at the moon in a daze, when disturbed by his elder brother, he complained, "I'm talking to the moon , What are you two shouting?" The second child asked, "Third brother, what did you see on the moon?" The third child said, "I saw an osmanthus tree, and a little rabbit was pounding medicine under the tree." The second child said "Why don't you tell it to pound rice? Ask your stomach if you're hungry? If you look at the moon like this again, you'll be a starving ghost!" The sky suddenly darkened.The eldest said: "Okay, there is no need to quarrel, the moon is eaten by the clouds!" The second child got angry and said, "I want to take the big sesame cakes I want to eat in my dream, and I have delayed you for nothing!" The third child also complained: "The moon was whispering to me, and I asked you to interrupt it!" Said, the moon came out of the clouds again.The eldest said: "Second brother, hurry up and eat your sesame seed cakes; third child, continue to talk to the moon. I was so hungry that I panicked, so I went to bed first." The second child said, "I can't eat sesame seed cakes anymore, my dream told you to disturb the yellow rice cakes." It's gone!" The third child said, "The little rabbit also scared you two away!" The eldest suffocated, picked up the iron incense burner and said, "Let's split up, and each find his own moon!"

The iron incense burner is a family heirloom left by the ancestors.The censer was cast with a dragon pattern with its head held high, but it failed to bring good luck to future generations. It gradually lost its prestige and became an iron pot for cooking porridge.The boss saw the "ya"-shaped crack on the incense burner, knocked it on the stone, and the incense burner cracked into three pieces with a "bang".The eldest said in tears: "Brother, don't blame me for being disrespectful to our ancestors, just blame it for not bringing us steamed buns and sesame cakes. Each person will share a piece of broken pot, and each go away!" The second child said: "Brother, what a mess! Baihe called me, and I left with Baihe." The third child said, "Brother, the moon is looking at me in the sky, and I followed the moon." The eldest patted the big mulberry tree and said, "Bend down and nod for me, the mulberry tree, I Just guarding the mulberry tree and not leaving. This small thatched cottage belongs to the three of us, and it is named Zhang's. You two or your descendants get along well, don't forget to come back and recognize your relatives, and take your respective broken pots as a record, yes If there is a crack, it is a descendant of our old Zhang family."

My father said that the boss of "Poguo Zhang" is Zhang An, the grandfather of the Zhang family.According to Zhang'an people, the grandfather married a particularly capable woman fleeing from famine.The couple opened up wasteland and farmed land, planted mulberry and raised silkworms. In just two years, green mulberry gardens and cultivated land appeared around the old mulberry trees.What makes future generations extremely proud is that the grandparents have wide hips and big buttocks, and they also have a pair of "pocket milk".When the old grandpa rubbed her with his heel, she would "chirp" and give birth to a baby.The old grandma kept "chirping" and raised twelve boys on her "cloth bag milk".

The old grandparents gave birth to a strong interest and a wealth of experience, and entered a good state of improvisation and peace of mind.Early in the morning, she carried a bamboo basket to pick mulberry leaves, and when she heard the hen that had just laid her eggs cluck, cluck, she was reminded, so she burrowed into the wormwood tree and "chirped" again. Climb to the tree and pick mulberry leaves.When she went back with the bamboo basket, the hen was still boasting about "big, big".She said to the chicken: "What do you have to brag about? Look at what's in my bamboo basket." The hen stretched her neck and blushed immediately when she saw a big fat boy sleeping on the tender mulberry leaves. face.From then on, our Zhang An's hens changed their tune after laying eggs, and called out convincingly: "The baby is big, the baby is big!"

The descendants of the grandpa's grandpa all married wives and had children according to the standards of the grandpa's grandma, and the men grew like wild weeds. In less than a hundred years, Zhang'an, which was registered by the government, appeared on the bank of the Baihe River. The government has added a group of strong men and poor men who are pleasing to the eye and hard-working, providing the rich with a large group of strong long-term workers and tenant farmers.There are also particularly capable descendants of the Zhang family who have become small landlords who ate sesame seed cakes, or self-cultivators who occasionally set up chazi, bake buns with wheat straw fire, and eat with shepherd's purse or shredded radish once in a while.

The debate about what the moon is is still a big unsolved issue in Zhang An's public opinion circle, and more and more ambiguities in astronomy have arisen.For example, when the moon is full, you only think about biscuits or steamed buns, which is undoubtedly a historical limitation!Let go and think about it, can't it be a scallion pancake, or a thick pot helmet with a layer of sesame salt on it?No, it could even be a meat box with stuffed meat in it.For another example, the moon is more often a crescent moon. Please see, does the crescent moon look like "flat food"-the dumplings eaten by outsiders?No miles!Our crescent moon is not an ordinary crescent moon, it is one size bigger than the dumplings eaten by outsiders, at least it should be fried vegetable corners, no, no!It should be steamed hot noodle corners in a basket. People in the city say they are steamed dumplings. One must weigh more than one or two, and it must be filled with meat or mutton!

The fragments of the incense burner, that is, the broken pot, have become undisputed historical relics.It has been handed down for more than a hundred generations since the great grandfather sealed it in a rough clay pot with white plaster and put it in the Zhang family ancestral hall.More than half of the Zhang'an people still lived a life of "half a year's grain of bran vegetables", and some people dared to complain about the great grandfather, saying that there was only a "dragon's body" on the piece of broken pot he shared, and he fell into a "poor pit". Li can neither raise its head nor wag its tail.However, the "dragon head" and "dragon tail" taken away by the second and third grandfathers did not come back to rendezvous. We can only verify their whereabouts from the long-standing Zhang'an ballads.

Zhang An's ballad said: "When the moon goes, I will go too. I will drive animals for the moon." Take a breath, wash your hands, a little turtledove flew from the sky. Turtledove, turtledove, don't cry, just take a sip of cold water and I'll go, Rush to the sun in one go.  This should be the ballad left by the third grandfather.The third grandfather followed the moon, and his whereabouts were hidden in the ballad.When he "rushed to the sun in one go", it was also the time when the moon was setting.It can be deduced from this that the third grandfather followed the moon around a semicircle and settled in the western part of China.It's notoriously barren there.The third grandfather only cared about the sweet-scented osmanthus tree and the little rabbit in the moon, and didn't understand the importance of steamed buns and sesame seed cakes.It is not optimistic whether this branch of Zhang's clan is still passing on the lineage. There is also a second version of Zhang An's ballad:  When Baihe goes, I will go too. I will drive the livestock for Baihe, and I will rush to the old ferry. Go to Xiangyang, wash your hands; go down to Fancheng, drink a glass of wine, All the way to Hankou. "My son, my son" and went on.  This ballad contains the "route map" of the second grandfather, which shows that he entered the Han River from the Baihe River, and after he settled in Xiangfan, he arrived in Hankou again. Then I followed the Yangtze River to "drive the cattle".If he drove all the way to the mouth of the sea and continued to drive, he would have to cross the ocean and drive the animals to nowhere.Even if the descendants of the second grandfather ate big sesame seed cakes, they even soaked the sesame seed cakes in mutton soup to enjoy, sprinkled with a handful of coriander, and poured a spoonful of bright red chili oil. Come back and share.The people of the Zhang'an clan also gradually forgot about this lineage.It wasn't until the end of the 20th century that someone's eyes lit up, and he made a tempting prophecy under the old mulberry tree: "Listen! Maybe one day, there will be a wealthy overseas Chinese carrying a cloth bag of dollars, and carrying a platinum box, box, box, etc. There is a piece of broken pot in it, and it is traveling across the ocean, come to Zhang'an to recognize relatives. Wait!"