After many years, when I saw Zhang Jiashan again, I was still confused and surprised by this character.He had a goat belly handkerchief tied on his head, his hands were cut behind his back, his waist was a little hunched, and he was walking towards us along the mountain road, around a ridge, and in a blink of an eye. The way people in northern Shaanxi tie sheep's belly towels is completely different from that of people in other places.People in other places tie it backwards and tie a knot behind their heads.People from northern Shaanxi tie it forward, and the knot is tied on the forehead.The two corners of the towel, like sheep's horns or ox horns, suddenly rise to the left and right.This kind of knot is called "hero knot".Dramatic characters sometimes use it this way.This is the Zhafa handed down by the elders.I believe that when Li Zicheng was the accountant of Ganshangling, he did it like this.

The vestibule of Zhangjiashan is full, and the four pavilions are round. Correspondingly, the back of the head is very flat.The head shape and face shape of people in northern Shaanxi are partly due to heredity, and partly due to acquired caressing.After the child is born, until the full moon period, parents should put a pillow made of millet on the back of the child's head, and put two more pillows on both sides of the head to keep the head from moving.The two legs were tied tightly with rope.After a month like this, the head is flat, the forehead is raised, and the legs are straight all their lives.People in northern Shaanxi have a "noble" feeling when they walk in front of people, which is not unrelated to their caressing during confinement.

Zhangjiashan's big face plate is probably related to the Huns.We know that the Huns left deep traces on the ground in northern Shaanxi.And his big nose is related to party members.For a period of time, the Northern Shaanxi Plateau was the lair of these party members who came from Qinghai.After the demise of the Xixia Dynasty, it is believed that many refugees returned here.According to a friend of mine, more than thirty nomads flooded the ground like a tide.Therefore, a face of a person in northern Shaanxi is a history of the northern Shaanxi plateau, a history of the twenty-four still alive.

Zhang Jiashan's big nose probably gave birth to mites when he was young.Now even the mites no longer patronize this old face, or in other words, the rosacea nose is healed, and it is no longer red.However, there were still some marks on the garlic head, and the pores on the nose and even the entire face were very thick, and after two sips of wine, they became red and shiny. His mouth is very big, which is exactly what the common people say "a man with a big mouth eats all directions".There is a big tongue in that mouth, and this big tongue is used for "speaking white" and "speaking black".Or in the words of the common people: "full mouth and big tongue".However, the phrase "red mouth and white teeth" in the novel is not accurate, because in the era in which our novel is written, Zhang Jiashan has few teeth in his mouth.

He also has two protruding ears. There is nothing special about Zhang Jiashan's clothes.Because he was a village cadre, the jacket usually has a pocket, and there is a pen in that pocket.Whether this money is used or not is not important.The important thing is not to wear it, so as to show it is different from other sheep-blocking old men and the like.There are still some changes in the costumes of the northern Shaanxi people, that is, after the educated youths in Beijing came.This change is reflected in Zhang Jiashan's feet. The shoes on his feet are called "lazy shoes" by the educated youth.

However, when Zhang Jiashan was young, he wore a top called "Bai Yi Yi".The clothes are what we usually call cotton jackets.But this cotton-padded jacket has been stitched densely with barbed needles like the soles of shoes.This kind of clothes is very affordable, and one piece should be worn by older generations.If you use it to carry firewood, you are not afraid of being hung up, and when you are tired from plowing the land, you can just lie down on the ground without fear of getting dirty.The times are different, let alone this clothes, I am afraid not many people have even seen it now.

When revising this novel with a different name, the character Zhang Jiashan stood vividly in front of me all the time, laughing loudly, and the laughter resounded throughout my small writing room. In this remote corner of the earth, there lived a group of somewhat strange people.They are stubborn.They are innocent and kind.Their hearts are higher than the sky and their lives are thinner than paper.They are so pretentious that they are arrogant.They are probably a little neurotic.They have dreamed of heroes for generations, and used themselves to create legends.They are a wonderful combination of Spartacus and Don Quixote's character.They are the last knights to live on this plateau, although their mounts were lost two thousand years ago.They call "death" "uphill", birth "falling grass", and the process of survival itself "suffering".

I am in my fifties this year, and I have lived in northern Shaanxi for more than thirty years.I have seen many characters like Zhang Jiashan who are both funny and sublime.They are a product of the plateau, a product of the environment, just like the crops that grow naturally on the land. That year, at the place where the Yanhe River empties into the Yellow River, I met an old man who blocked sheep.On the way to herd sheep, the old man wrote a book of "famous quotes" all his life, then memorized this pile of papers, and handed it to the county magistrate, who asked the county magistrate to find a place to publish it.We can imagine that in this closed environment, under the background of lack of communication and improvement, this pile of paper may be just a pile of waste paper.Therefore, when the pretentious old sheep-blocking man backed this pile of papers to the county magistrate, the county magistrate said: "Only the words spoken by celebrities are famous quotes. Your old sheep-blocking old man, what you say is not a famous saying." "The old man argued: "There are famous sayings first, and then they became famous!" The county magistrate retorted: "Because he became famous first, and then his words are called famous sayings!" I am coming.So the county magistrate pushed the pile of papers to me.After the county magistrate left, the old sheep-stopper looked at the county magistrate's background, and said at this moment one of his best quotes: "I wanted to tell you something. Now, I won't tell you, Let you be confused forever!"

The old man who stopped the sheep left in a disgrace.He will grow old beside his sheep among those hills.One of his dreams was shattered, the thing that sustained his spirit was gone.He has now become the poorest man in the world, the most humble man.Before that, when he walked into the county magistrate's office with his "Famous Quotes" on his back, he didn't look like this. At that time, he felt that the whole world belonged to him. People like this can be encountered at any time in the larger villages, market towns, and county towns on the northern Shaanxi plateau. They are part of the plateau and are native plants of the plateau.

In Yulin that year, I met a tall old man who looked very similar to Zhang Jiashan.He is a desert control hero who has just returned from receiving an award from the United Nations.The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations believes that the sand control on this ground provides experience and demonstration for countries and regions on the earth that are in the same environment. He laughed when he saw people.The first sentence he said to me was: "People all over the country are proud of me, but I am sober, I cannot be proud of myself!" These words, perhaps only those most superb language artists can speak so roundly and so vividly.Those words were full of endless conceit and publicity, even arrogance.But he said it, and said it in the most modest tone.You have to turn your mind three times to grasp the spiritual essence conveyed by this sentence.

This is the tone and behavior of my Zhangjiashan! Such exaggerated characters can be said to be all over the plateau. I remember the writer Lu Yao told me one thing before his death. When Lu Yao returned home from Xi'an, it was already dark.At this time, a lantern swayed down the mountain from the opposite mountain, crossed the river, and then went up to the bank of his house.This is a farmer, he came to ask a question.What is it!The old man said: "I heard that the United States has a new president. His name is Bush (old)!" Lu Yao said that he was deeply sad at that time.He said that you plowed the land all day and didn't even bother to eat dinner, so you came to ask questions over the mountains and mountains because of this impossible matter? !What has it to do with you! This is the nature of people in northern Shaanxi.It's just by nature, you can't help yourself. The world is turning into a village.There is less and less room for idealists, visionaries, and dreamers like Zhang Jiashan.The world is becoming more utilitarian, more practical, richer and poorer.It is ruthlessly crushing those ancient villages like Liuliu Town, it mocks idealists like Zhangjiashan, and makes such villages and such people extinct. So here's the final folk. After talking about Zhang Ganda, let us talk about the character of Guzi Godmother by the way. Women like Guzi godmother can be found everywhere on the northern Shaanxi plateau, all over the plateau. They are characters influenced by the passionate emotions and bold lyrics of folk songs in northern Shaanxi, and they are the daughters of the plateau.When they were young, they were beautiful and beautiful, and they became the young people in this area, the sexual fantasies of those bachelors, and the characters in the new script of folk songs in northern Shaanxi.Alas, nature thinks the mountains are too open and dead, and the life is too barren, monotonous and bitter, so they often send these flower-like daughters to decorate the northern wilderness. When they are old, they still have another charm. Just like our millet godmother, she has thin skin and tender flesh, her hair is combed shiny, and sometimes a flower is pinned to her temple.Like cats, they lie in the sky covered by men, living comfortably.They admire heroes, and they understand that they came to this world to accompany heroes.But don't underestimate their strength, good men are cultivated by good women.Without Guzi Godmother, there would be no Zhangjiashan.All Zhang Jiashan's heroic feats in this novel are just for one person to see, and he cannot disappoint this woman.He wants this woman to say bravely in front of others: "Look, how good the man in my kiln is!"