Chapter 100 0100

In the narrow alley in the middle of the second street to the east of the Wanjialou Ancestral Hall, there is a small coffin shop. Although this coffin shop is small, everyone who has visited Wanjialou knows about Wancai Coffin Shop. son of a bitch.In the remote north, there are taboos in all walks of life; only the business of opening a coffin shop has the most taboos; therefore, those who study carpentry, unless it is absolutely necessary, do not want to rely on dead people for food, and engage in this despondent business; In folklore, there are many stories about coffin shops, and it seems that even the ghosts have a mockery of these ghost eaters.Wancai Coffin Shop is famous because there is only one shop in the town of Wanjialou; whoever falls down must lie in a coffin made by Wancai Coffin Shop.

The descendants of Wanjia and other families always have such a traditional consciousness, thinking that their distant ancestors were military generals of the Ming Dynasty. Since they are the descendants of the generals, they would rather live on the streets than work in the five professions; As far as my old second wife is concerned, I would rather have a few more villains like Wan Shu, who like to eat and cheat, than earn a living in a serious manner.Because of this, all those who run teahouses, stall shops, shaving heads, mending bowls, bricklayers, smith shops, and mason shops in Wanjialou are all people with foreign surnames, and only this coffin shop is surnamed Wan. It's open.

Wancai's family was poor, and he didn't want to rely on the help of his tribe for alms. He went out with a small burden since he was a child. He learned this craft on the south bank of the Sanhe River. After returning, he opened a coffin shop. I have privately discussed that people with the surname Wan have a decent family style, even if they are so poor that they have no roof to live on and no place to stand on, so that their thin spines are glued to the stone wall of the ancestral hall, they should not open a coffin shop. , relying on the dead to eat.However, these gossips can only be said behind the scenes.Wan Fang has such a stubborn temper, he doesn't listen to those gossips, if someone tells him how about opening a coffin shop, he will swell his neck and yell at people's faces with his nostrils: "I only opened a coffin shop in Wan Fang!" Son, don’t scalp the dead ghosts, you get what you pay for, you don’t do anything wrong to people, even if ghosts knock on the door at night?! I just don’t want to split the ancestral tablets in the ancestral hall and sell them as matches. Can't control me?!"

Because of Wancai's struggle to the end, Wancai's coffin shop not only opened, but also those gossips were diluted with the passage of time.In fact, this bustling town really needs such a coffin shop. Before Wancai opened the coffin shop, all the rich and wealthy families in the town would prepare their timbers early, please. The carpenter comes to the house to prepare the birthday materials, and paints them every other year. In case the head falls down, there are ready-made birthday materials for burial, but ordinary people can't afford the kind of large coffins that are always in the time of death. In order to find someone to send a bullock cart to the town market forty miles away to buy coffins, not only is the journey too long, transportation is inconvenient, but it also takes time.

The days passed by, and to Wancai, the days were always so dull and boring. In that deep well-like long and narrow windowless shop, there was no difference whether it was sunny or rainy, and spring and autumn were all so gloomy. With a cold and gloomy face, like a ruthless evening lady, sometimes I raise my head and look at the shoveled wall covered with mildew-green rain marks and the brown-yellow-black beam roof covered with cobwebs, and suddenly feel that I am a ridiculous figure , There is deep-seated sadness in the smile; this dark shop is just a big coffin, and I am opening the small coffin for others in the big coffin. …Sharp chisels and flat chisels, like long-beaked woodpeckers pecking at sections of wood, the sound of empty space crashing against the ancient wall, the sound of bursting out and the sound of hitting back rushed together, pushing people away. Squeezing and squeezing, ding dong ding dong, ding dong ding dong, the tip of the chisel is not only chiseling a wooden hole, but also almost hollowing out people's hearts.The yellow and thin apprentice has just learned how to use a rough plane. He is planing a coffin board on a long bench. The shavings rise upwards through the planer holes, pile up high like a tower, and then fall down in strands and scatter on the ground. , filling the heavy and gloomy air with the mixed smell of various woods—the fragrance of death that is always the same, as if it intends to give the dead a little comfort.

The days go by like that, in the carving and knocking of ding dong ding dong, spring and autumn, cloudy and sunny days are all knocked away, coffins are knocked out one after another, sold out one after another, and the shop is opened in Wancai In the nearly 20 years since then, Wanjialou has put many familiar faces into the long box made by himself. ! … It doesn’t matter if you love to buy drunk with a jug in your arms at Wanliang Shop, or you love to squat on a long bench with your arms folded over your knees in Shang’s teahouse, talking about the past and the present, the poor, the rich, the cowardly, The tyrannical, various forms of life are settled in this long box.

When it comes to looking at life, no one sees it more indifferently than Wan Cai. The coffins are finished one by one, and they are sorted and arranged in rows. The best large coffins are single wooden coffins dug out of thousand-year-old green cypress or fragrant wood from deep mountains. There are no such huge trees in the northern plains. When I first learned the craft, I only I heard the legend from the master that the fragrant wood was felled by loggers in the mountains thousands of miles away in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Merchants and lumber merchants tie the entire batch of purchased giant logs into huge wooden rafts (* that is, rafts.) and let them down along the mighty river, commonly known as rowing, also known as walking; Their lives were handed over to the turbulent river. They traveled far away with huge sums of money. Even if there were no accidents along the way, it would take several years from the purchase of timber to the rafting and exile downstream along the river. Time...Sometimes you are unlucky, and when the raft hits a rock when passing the Three Gorges, or gets stuck in the shoal, you have to rely on God's blessing.In those legends, the hardships experienced by those who released the row were described as more difficult than Tang Monk's journey to the west to seek scriptures. Those river spirits, those water monsters, ghost whirlpools as big as millstones, and goose feathers also sank to the bottom. The cold water pool made everyone who heard it shudder.But what do those legends symbolize?For a coffin shop, it is just an exaggeration to the customers why they charge such an exorbitant price for a high-quality coffin, so what about a coffin made of gold and silver? !Can't take it off, put it in a pair of stinky skin bags, and bury it silently in the loess.

What is lamentable is that ordinary people in the world don't care about life but only pity death, and they care more about the ignorant bones after death than they care about the miserable years of life; Bewitched by such a magnificent coffin, even poor men who are hungry all day long dream of being able to sleep in such a coffin after death. ... The legend is always tempting. It is said that the dead sleep in the fragrant wood coffin, insects and ants will not eat, the cold will not invade, and the corpse will not be damaged for a hundred years; , to be able to support the blessings of the children and grandchildren.But unless the coffin shop owner intends to deceive people for a big deal, these are pitifully stupid!

How about thousands of years, if it is really tied to the coffin, then? !Then all the powerful and wealthy people in the past dynasties should be prosperous forever?Legend has it that there were eighty-one tombs of Cao Cao in the Wei Dynasty, but in the end it was still unavoidable that the corpses were looted. It's like being gnawed by someone secretly, how can there be any prestige in life? ! ...these can't arouse those suspicious and stupid people; if you can't sleep in the fragrant wood coffin, you can go back to the second-class coffin. Well, people from poorer families should at least compete for the thirteenth and fifteenth dans in the center of the circle.As for the eighteenth paragraph, it is ordinary, and then there are rubbing wooden coffins, white wooden coffins and thin-skinned materials.

Ding dong ding ding, ding dong ding dong, in the eyes of the old carpenter Wancai, almost all coffins look the same, the big one is only bigger than the outer shell, no matter how big it is, it cannot fit two people inside; It takes a lot of energy to make, and after it is finished, it is carried on the shelf to apply a primer, and then tung oil, lime, and glutinous rice juice are poured into the joints of the coffin, and then the outer paint is applied, and then tung oil is applied. As far as the carving of characters is concerned, it takes ten and a half months to carve fine patterns. It seems that if there is no carving or inlaying of longevity characters, the dead will not sleep in peace and become ghosts.

The more troubled the world is, the more people focus on preparing a good wedding for themselves, but the more troubled the world is, the fewer people can really sleep without any problems!When Mr. Wan was buried, he also made a few cypress round-centered ten-fold heads. Later, the wood jumped and rose, and he could only make thirteenth and eighteenth segments. Later, he could even afford thirteenth and eighteenth segments. There are not many people here, so I have to beat more wooden coffins and white wooden coffins. I also feel that hitting more of these coffins will save money for the dead family, and it will be safe enough to beat them. However, Wancai, whose hair has already turned grey, is neither blind nor deaf. Of course, he has heard the scenes in various villages and fields in the Northland, and knows that only Wanjialou in the corner of the barren sky, people generally sleep in coffins after death. , the rest of the place, it would be good to have two reed mats rolled up after death, with the top not showing and the bottom not showing the feet, and the grave is dug deeper to avoid being dug by dogs!When someone talked about these situations, they always sighed and said to Wancai: "Maybe after a while, the war will hit Wanjialou, and people here will not be able to sleep in coffins, so your coffin shop should be closed." Good luck!" "Let it go," Wan Cai always said: "I think people don't have to fight to sleep in a big coffin and waste a fortune in vain, but I don't want to see a pack of wild dogs walking with human bones in their mouths, throwing away like that. It’s no longer a world with naked corpses!” Went to Dongyan City and pulled guns to protect the dam. Except for the necessary rice, the north-south traffic was cut off. I couldn't buy the wood for the coffin with the money, so I had to use the materials at hand and beat some white wood. Coffin, this time the little Gu Lord led the gun team to attack Yangjiao Town, but Yangjiao Town was not completed, but Xiaoxie'er and his gang killed more than a dozen people, and each of them slept in a white wooden coffin. What taboo, more than a dozen murderous ghosts sleep together in the coffin made by myself. I have never encountered it in the early years. Although the coffin is shared by each family and the money of the deceased is not spent, I also feel that I can’t do it. Earning a penny from the dead, let alone not earning a penny, and deducting the due manual money, it can be regarded as half a month of hard work for them. If this is the case, Master Gu also blamed himself for asking too high a price——he I don't know what kind of wood rises? !After allocating the coffin fee, there is not even enough to buy materials. After working in this business for a long time, even the master and his apprentices have developed such a professional habit of breaking the coffin during the day, lifting the lid of the coffin at night, and then lying on the bed, falling down and screaming. sleep.If it is a hot day, you can choose a coffin near the aisle where there is wind to sleep. If it is a cold day, you only need to remove half of the coffin lid, and you can sleep in the coffin. With a thin quilt, the whole body can be warmed and sweated. A large number of coffins were sold, the three masters and apprentices only had two white wooden coffins to sleep in, one for the two disciples, one for the heart and one for the lid, and Wancai himself occupied one, with a small mattress on the coffin lid There is a flask of wine in the coffin; there is no more wood to build the coffin, so the axes, hammers, drills and saws are temporarily packed up, buttered and hung on the wall, only then do I feel that my life is just like breathing, ding dong ding dong, two He couldn't hear that, he felt as if he was on his deathbed, his lungs were so stuffy that his lungs would explode, and the two little apprentices had nowhere to put their hands and feet, so they grabbed the broom and came to sweep the shop, Wan Cai scolded him.