Chapter 3 1936 Duck Collection - Huaihua Town

Recently, people often associate all irrelevant things, probably because they are too idle.I was alone during the day, when I saw a newly bought green vase, I thought that the most suitable thing to put in the vase was acacia.The acacia has not opened, and the wisteria has arrived in the bottle first.And it seems impossible to forget the white spikes of acacia flowers.Because of Sophora japonica, I thought of Huaihua Town. At night, I dreamed that a large bunch of Sophora japonica was folded beside a big iron stove. When I woke up, I smelled the faint fragrance of wisteria, and I suspected it was the tassels folded by the iron stove. White acacia flowers!

I lived in Huaihua Town for a year and a half.It was seven or eight years ago, and the place has changed recently.I have had both the best and the worst impressions of that place, and I have preserved them all.However, this is a last resort, I hope to remember that part better.Regarding the stove, there is also a spring not far from the stove, which belongs to the cute category, so it is still inseparable in the dream. Where is Huaihua?I will not say.This place exists, but it is far, far away.This place, though indicated to you as a small dot on the map, is in reality beyond the minds of you northerners.It is also because it is far beyond the thinking of many northerners (not just northerners), so I say far!To be honest, if there are really those kind of fools who want to go there to see the iron stove and confirm my words, they can reach that place by walking from a small commercial port in the south of Xiangxi for twenty days.The place is not big, just a Dazheng Street.The street is said to be big, but compared to the small towns, it can accommodate two sedan chairs walking side by side. Although it is not big, it is not too small for a small town in the south.

My favorite is to play on a small mound not far from where I live.Forgot the name.There's a hole there, I'll call it the wind tunnel.The location of the wind tunnel is on the waist of a small mound, which is very strange, the mound does look like a big steamed bun piled up artificially.But the wind tunnel seems to be all natural stones.The wind tunnel is roughly connected with another cave, so there is often wind blowing out of the cave, and in hot weather, the wind is extremely cold.People in the town, the trade wind is blown from the mouth of the cave god, and those who take it will have a fever, headache, and even die, so there is never a town child playing by the cave.Although I often heard that many boys and girls in the town who died young were taken by this cave god, because I love to play, I dared to resist superstition.The wind tunnel would have been great too.Among the places I have been to, the wind tunnel is one of the places I have been nostalgic for many years.Many stones, around the mound, are about to fall, but they don't collapse. Naturally, they are supported by another big stone, or hold down a corner, and become host and guest with the mound.The mound is in the middle and the top is extremely smooth, covered with fine loess. In August, wild chrysanthemums bloom all over the loess, like stars and embroidered blankets.If I could draw, I would have drawn it long ago.

Another place is Fangjing Spring in Tianpingzhong.The spring in Tianping seems to have lost the elegant environment.But around the spring, more than a dozen willow trees were planted by the predecessors, which narrowed the wideness around Tianping a lot.Sitting by the spring and watching women washing vegetables, the roots and leaves of cabbage and radishes are floating on the stream at the end of the spring, and the spring water is so clear that many women use it as a mirror to get a haircut, which is also interesting.When the water flows out of the well, it becomes a long and narrow stream.The source of the spring water comes from the sandy soil in the ground. Under the sun, the air turns into small pearls in the water, turning up from the bottom of the water, which is so interesting that people can't bear to leave it.What happened to the spring water in eight years?It is impossible to ask.

The smelting furnace of the ironworks is on the south side of the town.To get there, you have to cross a river ditch about ten feet wide.The ditch was often dry until there was only a small amount of water left, and sometimes it swelled above the embankment.When the water rises, the ironworks cannot go.When the water rises, although there are bridges and ferries, they have to encircle more than two miles.Who can travel three miles just to look at the iron furnace?Therefore, when the water rises, even if we want to see it, we have no choice but to admire it from a distance across the river.When the water falls, go over the jumping stones. There are forty jumping stones, some of which are less than one foot square. The water in the river is shallow, but the flow is extremely fierce. Some people want to feel dizzy because of this. .On the other hand, I swayed, estimating that even if I lost my mind and fell, I could still bully the river.

"That's a very hateful stream!" Once, a military officer who accompanied me to the iron factory to play, saw the flowing water, and turned around with white foam.When a soldier is so afraid of water, this is one thing I still laugh at now when I think of his timid demeanor. After exiting South Street, the stovetop, which is five or seven feet tall, is in front of you.Thinking about it, the stove is more than seven feet high. When we look at its top, it seems that we always have to hold our heads up and hold the hat with our hands.It is a great monster of stone, brick, bamboo, wood, mud, iron and all that have been brought together for architectural success.At that time, I spent a lot of thought, but I couldn't find where to start.It looks like a bunker, several times bigger than a bunker.It looks like a bunker to describe it, but many people have never even seen a bunker.Let me make another comparison, it looks like an old-fashioned pewter table.It is square and tapering towards the top, a monster resembling a large clay candlestick.The greatness makes the people around it feel more insignificant than a child standing next to an elephant. When I first saw it, I had a silly thought, that is, it was not something made by humans.Smoke from the top of the stove, sometimes red.

At the other end, there is a long bridge made of iron strips and planks that hangs in the sky. One end of the bridge is placed on the top of the furnace. Every now and then, a person can be seen pushing something from the other end of the slope to the top of the furnace. But I don't know that this is pushing ore and fuel.The ore is first built with coal interlayers, and then smelted in an open pit to become dark gray. As for the fuel for the fire, it is not known whether to use coal or firewood. Once, because an adjutant was there to see it, we went up the slope and crossed the long bridge to the top of the furnace.Seen from below, the pointed stove top is at most as big as four square tables.Unexpectedly, it was unexpected.This top is at least larger than an ordinary stage, and there are huge railings around it.The hole where the fire came out was bigger than the bed.The top is covered with large square bricks, which are clean and flat, just like the excellent courtyard of other people's houses; standing on the top, all the people looking down are smaller than looking up from below.The room attached to the stove to keep the bellows is very small, just like two domino stools, and it looks like a square wooden chicken coop.The whole city of Huaihua can also be seen very clearly, and the tiles of each house can be clearly recognized.The adjutant said it would be great to be able to come here at night to see the moon, but we have never been able to come here at night.

When I got to the iron stove, I had another wish, that someone would allow me to live in the bellows house that looked like a chicken coop on the top of the stove for two days.I believe that as long as someone agrees, I was extremely willing at that time.Many colleagues also said that this room is interesting.The house is square and built with big wooden pillars, which are as neat and beautiful as the railroad sleepers.The top is covered with iron plates, and the surroundings are hooped with iron bars. The room is close to the stove, like the toe of the stove.In the room, a large square wooden bellows that occupies half of the room stands in the corner.The body of the bellows is exactly like the house, smaller wooden posts, tightly bound under shiny iron hoops, and a large log handle in front, covered with iron sheets.The iron sheet glistened for the hands pulling the bellows.The six bellows pullers were shirtless, standing in front of the bellows, holding the handle of the bellows with both hands, one commander, with a whistle of "Shh...", all six of them rushed forward; and then "Shh..." There was a sound, and then another retreat. In less than half an hour, the sweat of the six people was already sweating, so another six people came to change shifts, still shush and shush, and sent the wind into the furnace.If you listen to the whistle from a distance, it is a mountain sparrow calling, but if you get closer, it becomes a cricket again.Behind the bellows house, there are countless piles of raw iron, which probably have to be transported to another place to be smelted. The iron is transported by the backs of oxen and people. There are also many oxen and many people.

one One person, with an iron stick more than ten feet long, opened a small iron door at the foot of the furnace, and the mercury-like substance flowed out into a shallow pit dug on the spot. The purple has turned into the color of ordinary wool iron.You can also see white sparks that are more lively than fireworks at the iron place. If it is at night, it will be even more interesting. Another characteristic of Huaihua is rain.Rain and the like, like the tears of a crying woman, will always fall like this for many years, and it will continue to fall, but it will never end.Especially in autumn and the end of spring, people with a good temper will often worry about this unreasonable rain, and feel like cursing their mothers.All day long, there is nothing but nothing, and under the pursuit of a very small wind, a town is completely buried in this kind of smog.On the main street, that is to say, on the wider street, there is only muddy, black filth, which is evenly spread all over the street.On the street, what overflowed was the stinky water poured from the tofu vats in those tofu shops—some of the water had some white foam in it, and when it flowed into the street, it was still boiling like fermentation.Under the counter of the grocery store, you can see some drenched feathers, pitifully shrunken, and much smaller than usual, with tails hanging down.Ducks are laughing and laughing in the street, changing their usual color, sloppy, inserting a flat-billed shell into the crevice raised by the street stone, looking for food such as red worms and astragalus in the dirty water... This is beyond my reach. Between likes and dislikes, so I won't say much.

April 1926