Chapter 56 Clean water and dust (1)

Tianzao felt that taking a bath at the end of the year was no different than giving hair to a dead pig's leg.A pig's skin is white and tender after being shaved off its rough hair, and a human being's skin is also white and tender after rubbing off the dirt all over his body.The difference is that after the pigs are divided, they become a delicacy among the population. People in Lizhen set the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth lunar month as the day for releasing water.The so-called "water release" is to take a bath.The Zheng family assigned the work of boiling and pouring water to Tianzao.Tianzao has been taking on this responsibility since he was eight years old, and has been doing it for five years.

People here only take a bath once a year, which is on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth lunar month.Although usually women and little girls who love to clean can't stop washing and brushing, but they are just doing it in a small way.For example, women wash their feet and legs when they return from the fields in summer and pass by Shuipaozi, while little girls wash their necks and armpits with water after washing their hair.Therefore, in midsummer, the necks and bellies of many bare-backed little boys are black, as if there are black bats crawling on them. The house where Tianzao lived was used as a bathroom.The fire wall was very hot, and the curtains in the room were drawn early.The order of bathing in Tianzao family is from the oldest to the youngest, the elderly, parents, and finally the children.When Grandpa was alive, he was the first person to take a bath.He washed quickly, and it was over in a quarter of an hour, and the water in the bathtub was not dirty, so the Tianzao just washed the water grass.Everyone closed the door when they showered, and the curtains were drawn down.When Tianzao was taking a bath, his mother always knocked on the door outside and said, "Tianzao, mom, will you rub your back for you?"

"No need!" Tianzao said, curled up in the water like a fish. "You can't wash it alone!" Mother said again. "Why can't I wash it clean?" Tianzao picked up the water with his fingers, making it make a splashing sound, as if telling his mother that he was washing very hard. "You don't have to be ashamed." My mother said with a smile outside the door, "You were born by your mother, are you still afraid of your mother watching?" Tianzao subconsciously clamped his legs in the bathtub, and he blushed and yelled, "What are you talking about? If you don't need to wash it, you don't need to wash it!"

Tianzao has never had a basin of real clean water to bathe in.Because he has to squat in front of the stove to boil water, and he has to take out buckets of dirty water after everyone has washed, so he can only wash with the water used by his family.That feeling is not uncomfortable at all, it is purely coping.And no matter how clean the water other people have washed, he always feels that it is very muddy. After soaking in the bathtub for more than ten minutes, he rubs it casually and then comes out.He also didn't like his parents using his living room as a bathroom, which made the air in the house damp, and the light bulbs were covered with water droplets. When he slept at night, he felt like he was sleeping in a pigsty.So as soon as the new year was over this year, he said to his mother: "This year, I should take a bath in Tianyun's room."

Tian Yun was making paper flowers at that time, she was so angry that she said, "Why are you in my room?" "Then why do you have to be in my house every year?" Tianzao also said with an angry neck. "You're a boy!" Tian Yun said, "You can't dirty a girl's room!" Tian Yun plausibly said, "And you are several years older than me, you are a brother, you still won't let me!" Tianzao stopped reasoning, but muttered to himself, "I hate Chinese New Year! What's wrong with Chinese New Year!" The family all laughed.Since grandpa passed away, grandma seldom laughed at home. Even if some words made the whole family laugh like boiling water, she was indifferent. Everyone thought she was deaf.Unexpectedly, after hearing Tianzao's words, she also laughed vigorously, and the phlegm surged up from the laughter, and she coughed, and all the dentures came out of her mouth.

Tianzao really doesn't like Chinese New Year.First of all, I don't like the rules of the Chinese New Year, burning paper to worship the ancestors, kowtow to pay New Year's greetings, the white snow at the intersection was made dirty like a pile of dog shit by the people who burned the paper, and the New Year seemed to be shrouded in ghosts.Secondly, he doesn't like the process of busy years. Everyone is so tired that their backs hurt and they complain.Removing quilts, painting walls, pasting lanterns, making new clothes, steaming rice cakes, etc. All kinds of work keep adults and children in a circle like hedgehogs.And not only do you have to sweep the house, but you also have to clean your own dust in the end. On the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, everyone in the family looked swollen because they scrubbed away a year's worth of dust. It always reminded him of a butcher. The scene of shaving a dead pig with an iron brush made me feel faintly disgusted.Finally, he didn't like that everyone was dressed up for the new year, and the new clothes made people look ridiculous and stiff.If people wearing new clothes stand in a row, it is easy to remind Tianzao of the stiff cloth in the cloth shop in the city.Moreover, Tianzao couldn't tolerate having to spend the New Year in the middle of the night. At that time, he was sleepy and tired, and had no appetite, but he had to cheer up and eat reunion dumplings. He was tired of it.He thought more than once that if he had the supreme power in his hands, the first item would be to modify the time of the new year.