Chapter 2 Chapter Two

The city of Chadong is built on the side of the mountain by the water. On the side near the mountain, the city wall is like a long snake, climbing along the mountain.On the side facing the water, there is room to set up a wharf by the river outside the city, where small canopied boats are moored.When the boat goes down, it transports tung oil, green salt, and dyed gallium.On the uplink, cotton, cotton yarn, cloth, groceries and seafood are transported.There is a river street running through all the piers. Most of the houses are half on the ground and half on the water. Due to the limited space, those houses are all equipped with stilted buildings.The spring water rose in the river, and when the water gradually entered the street, the people on the river street used long ladders, one end was placed on the eaves of the house, and the other end was placed on the city wall. , rice vat, enter the city from the ladder, and leave the city through the gate when the water recedes.In a certain year, if the flood comes especially fiercely, one or two of the stilted buildings along the river will be washed away by the flood, and everyone will stare blankly from the top of the city.The loser looks on likewise, as if he had nothing to say about his loss, just as nature sees other irremediable misfortunes coming.When the water is flooding, you can still look at the suddenly widened river surface from the city.Therefore, in places where the water is relatively slow, in front of the tax barges, there are often people driving small sampans. When the center of the river is ups and downs, it is an animal, a small log, or an empty boat with a woman or a woman on board. Hearing the sound of a child crying, he hurriedly paddled the boat, met the target a little downstream, tied it with a long rope, and paddled towards the shore.These honest and brave people also love profit and righteousness, similar to ordinary local people.Regardless of saving life and property, he is also very agile and brave in a kind of happy and adventurous behavior, which makes people see and have to applaud him.

That river is the famous Youshui in history, and its new name is Baihe.After the Baihe River reaches Chenzhou and joins the Yuanshui River, it becomes slightly turbid, implying the spring water coming out of the mountains.If you go upstream, you can see the bottom of the deep pools of three to five feet.The deep pool is illuminated by the daylight, and the small white stones at the bottom of the river, as well as the patterned agate stones, can all be seen clearly.The fish swimming in the water come and go as if they are floating in the air.There are many high mountains on both sides of the strait, and there are many fine bamboos in the mountains that can be used to make paper. They are dark green all the year round, which is eye-catching.Most of the people near the water live among the peach and apricot blossoms. In spring, you just need to pay attention. Wherever there are peach blossoms, there must be people, and wherever there are people, you can buy wine.In summer, the dazzling purple cloth clothes and trousers are dried in the sun, which can be used as a banner of where people are.When autumn and winter come, the houses on the cliffs and by the water can be seen clearly.The walls of yellow mud and black tiles are always in a proper position, and they are in perfect harmony with the surrounding environment, which makes the impression people get when facing them is really very pleasant.A traveler who has a slight interest in poetry and pictures, curled up in a small boat in this small river, and travels for thirty days will not be bored. One place does not make people fascinated.

The source of the Baihe River comes from the border of Sichuan, and the small boats going up from the Baihe River can go directly to Xiushan in Sichuan Province when the spring water is rising.However, if it belongs to the state of Hunan, Chadong is the last water pier.Although the surface of this river was about half a mile wide in Chadong, when the water falls in autumn and winter, the river bed is less than twenty feet away, and the rest is just a pool of bluestones.There is no way for small boats to go up after that, so all the import and export goods in the east of Sichuan are thrown into the water from this place.The export goods are all carried by porters with fir poles on their shoulders, and the import goods are all moved from this place in bundles and loads by manpower.

In this place, there is only one battalion of garrison soldiers reorganized from the green battalion in the past, and about 500 households are stationed in the city. (Among these households, except for some small capitalists who owned some Shantian Tongyou workshops, or put their accounts to store oil, rice, and cotton yarn, most of the rest were families with military status who came here when they were stationed.) There is also a lijin in the local area. Bureau, the office is in the small temple under the river street outside the city, and there is often a long letter hanging on it.The director lives in the city.A battalion of soldiers was stationed in the Yamen of the old general. Except for the trumpeters who went to the city every day to blow their trumpets to let people know that there were troops stationed here, the rest of the soldiers seemed to be non-existent.During the daytime in winter, when I went to the city, I saw clothes and vegetables drying in front of houses everywhere.Sweet potatoes with vines hang from the eaves.Bags made of brown clothes, filled with chestnuts, hazelnuts and other hard nuts, are also mostly hung under the eaves.In every corner of the house, chickens of all sizes were crowing and playing.Occasionally, there are some men who occupy the threshold in front of their house to saw logs, or split trees with an axe, and pile the chopped firewood into the open lawn, one by one like pagodas.Or you can see a few middle-aged women, wearing very hard starched blue cloth clothes, with white cloth button flower aprons hanging on the chest, bowing their waists in the sun while talking and doing things.Everything is always so quiet, and all the people pass every day in this simple loneliness.A little peace increases people's ability to think about "personnel" and dreams.Everyone who lives in this small town must have their own set of days, with certain expectations about the love and hate of personnel.But what are these people thinking?who knows.Living in a higher place in the city, one stop in front of the door can overlook the opposite river and the scenery in the river. When the boat comes, you can watch countless trackers from the opposite river beach from a distance.Those trackers also brought snacks, foreign candies and the like from downstream, but when they landed, they brought them into the city to exchange for money.When the boat comes, the child's imagination is on the side of those who pull the boat.As for the adults, hatching a nest of chickens, raising two pigs, entrusting the boatman to wear a pair of gold earrings, bringing back two feet of official green cloth, a jar of good soy sauce, and a double-material Mobil lampshade, takes up most of the housewife's time. upset.

Although this small town is so quiet and peaceful, the place is the junction of commercial transactions in eastern Sichuan, so the situation in Xiaoxiaohe Street outside the city is a little different.There are also inns where businessmen stay, and barbershops that stay in place.In addition, restaurants, grocery stores, oil stores, salt stores, and Huayizhuang all have their own status and decorate this river street.There are also shops selling sandalwood carts, bamboo cables, and pots used on ships, and those who introduce sailors to eat on the docks.On the long table in front of the small restaurant, there are often fried carp tofu, decorated with red pepper shreds, lying in a shallow bowl, with a lot of red chopsticks inserted in a large bamboo tube next to the bowl, no matter who is willing to spend a little money , this person can sit down next to the long table in front of the door, take out a pair of chopsticks in his hand, and a woman with slender eyebrows and white powder on her face will come over and ask: "Brother, deputy, I want sweet wine." Want to make wine?" The man with a higher flame, humorous, and interested in the shopkeeper will pretend to be angry and say: "Eat rum? You are not a child, and you ask someone to eat rum!" Then, 酽The cold shochu was scooped out from the big urn with a bamboo tube, poured into an earthen bowl, and immediately came to the desk beside him.The grocery store sells Mobil oil, lamps for burning Mobil oil, and paper for joss sticks.You Xingtun tung oil.The green salt from the fire well in the salt stack.The pied dress shop sells white cotton yarn, large cloth, cotton and black crepe for Baotou.Those who sell ship's goods have a list of all kinds of things, and there are iron anchors weighing more than 100 catties left on the side of the road outside the door, waiting for the price of the chief consultant.It specializes in introducing sailors, and those who eat at the pier stay at their home on River Street. The door is open all day long, and there are often ship owners in blue-feathered satin jackets and rough sailors coming in and out. The place is like a teahouse but does not sell tea. It is not a smokehouse. You can smoke again.Those who come here, although they are talking about the business experience on the boat, but most of the people who go up and down the boat, row the boat and pull the fiber have certain rules, so there is no need to discuss the number.Most of them came here to "get together".With the "leader in charge" as the center, talk about local current affairs, the business situation of the two provinces, and the "new things" downstream.Most of the invitations are held here when collecting funds, and it is also often held here when picking dice to see how many points there are at the head of the crop rotation meeting.There are two things that often become their business: buying and selling ships and buying and selling wives.

Some kind of patrons came into being with the development of commerce in the metropolis. Because of the needs of merchants and sailors, there is actually a group of people on the river street in this small border town, gathering in some houses with stilted buildings.This kind of woman was either brought from the nearby countryside, or she was a woman who came to Hunan with the Sichuan army. She wore fake foreign silk clothes, printed trousers, her eyebrows were drawn into a thin line, and her hair was in a big bun. It was covered with oils of a very strong fragrance.There is nothing to do during the day, just sitting at the door to make shoes, embroidering double phoenixes with red and green silk thread on the toes, or picking embroidered pockets for lovers and sailors, while watching passers-by, killing the long days.Or lean on the window facing the river to watch the sailors laying goods, and listen to the sailors singing while climbing the mast.At night, they take turns to receive merchants and sailors, earnestly fulfilling the duties of a prostitute.

Because the customs in the frontier are simple, even if you are a prostitute, you will always be so honest. When you meet someone you don’t know well, you have to pay money first when doing business, and then close the door and go wild. It's time.Prostitutes mostly rely on Sichuan businessmen to make a living, but most of their friendship is with sailors.In a good relationship, they bit their lips and necks and swore to each other, and made an agreement that "everyone is not allowed to mess around after breaking up", for forty or fifty days, the one floating on the boat and the one staying on the shore This one, they all stayed and passed the days, trying to bind their hearts tightly to a person far away.Especially the woman's sincerity and insanity beyond description. When the man doesn't come back after the appointed time, when he dreams, he often dreams that the boat is approaching the shore, and a person wobbles from the gangway to the shore by himself, and runs towards him. .Or if there is doubt in the middle of the day, in the dream, you will see a man singing to the other side on the mast, but ignore yourself.The weaker ones then threw themselves into the river and swallowed opium in their dreams, while the stronger ones ran straight towards the sailor with a kitchen knife in hand.Although their lives are so alienated from the general society, when tears and joy are mixed into the lives of these people in a kind of love and hatred, they are also similar to other young lives in another land, and they are wholeheartedly devoted to that little love. Soaked in hatred, seeing cold as hot, forgetting everything.If there are any differences, it's just that these people are a little more real and a little closer to confusion.Short-term engagements, long-term marriages, and temporary closures, these transactions about a woman's body, due to the simplicity of the people's sentiments, do not feel that they are obscene and shameful, and onlookers never use the concept of a scholar. To criticize and belittle.These people value righteousness over profit, and can keep their promises. Even prostitutes are often more trustworthy than people in cities who value morality and shame.

The name of Shun Shun at Zhangshui Wharf was a man who had spent his days in the camp during the Qing Dynasty.The same thing happened, some became great and famous because of the revolution, and some were beheaded and mutilated, but he returned to his hometown with the pain in his feet from a juvenile happy event, and bought a six oar with the little money he had saved. The white wooden boat was rented to a poor ship owner, who loaded it on behalf of others and traveled between Chadong and Chenzhou.With good luck, the boat will be fine within half a year, so from the money he earns, he begs for another little widow with a white face and black hair who has a little property.A few years later, on this river, he had four boats, a shop, and two sons.

But this generous and free-spirited person, although his career is very smooth, but because he likes to make friends and is generous and able to help others in need, he can't become violent like an oil dealer.Since I have spent my days in grain, understand the joys and sorrows of those who go out, and understand the feelings of frustrated people, so all boatmen who went bankrupt due to shipwrecks, veterans who passed by, and literary and ink scholars who came to this place to be famous and ask for help, all do their best to help. .While earning money from the water, they just scattered like this.The man could swim despite a little problem with his feet, and walk with uncommon smoothness, but he was so impartial.Everything on the water is originally extremely simple, and everything is dominated by a habit. Whoever bumps into each other, which boat hinders the interests of another person or another boat, has a customary method to solve it as usual.But to use this customary rule to arrange everything, there must be a senior and virtuous central figure.In the fall of a certain year, the original deacon died, and Shun Shun made such a substitute.At that time, he was only fifty years old. He was sensible, upright and peaceful, and he did not love money, so no one doubted his age.

Up to now, his eldest son is eighteen years old and the youngest is sixteen years old.Both young men were strong as bullocks, and could sail, swim, and walk long distances.They can do everything that young people from small villages and cities can do, and they are good at everything they do.The older ones, like their father, are bold and open-minded, and don't stick to the usual trifles.The young one's temperament is close to that of the white-faced and black-haired mother. She doesn't like to talk, but her eyes and eyebrows stand out. One can tell at a glance that she is intelligent and full of emotion.

Now that the two brothers have grown up, it is necessary to train them in various aspects of life. The father sends the two children to travel in turn.When going down the boat, I often follow my own boat as a buddy, sharing joys and sorrows with others.When rowing, choose the heaviest one, pull the head to stretch the second fiber when rowing, eat dried fish, spicy peppers, and stinky sauerkraut, and sleep on a hard deck.Going up from the dry road, I followed the passengers and goods in the east of Sichuan, passed Xiushan, Longtan, and Youyang to do business, no matter the cold, summer, rain or snow, I must wear straw sandals and follow the station.And he was wearing a short knife, and when he had to do it, he quickly pulled out the knife, stood in an open place, waited for the one on the opposite side, and then used hand-to-hand combat with this person to solve it.The ethos in the gang is that "a knife must be used to deal with enemies, and a knife must be used to unite friends", so when a knife is needed, they never let it lose that opportunity.Learning trade, socializing, learning to live in a new place, and learning to use a knife to protect the body and reputation, the purpose of education seems to be to enable the two children to learn the courage and loyalty of being human.As a result of one point of education, both of them are as strong as tigers, but they are kind to their relatives, not arrogant, not flashy, and not domineering. Therefore, when the father and son are mentioned on the border of Chadong, everyone respects them. This name is not without a kind of respect. When the two sons were very young, the father understood that the elder son was similar to himself in everything, but he seemed to dote on the second son a little bit.Because of this unconscious selfishness, he named his eldest son Tianbao and his second son Nuosong.It means that there may be unavoidable disagreements in personnel matters blessed by God. As for the gifts sent by the Nuo God, according to local customs, people cannot despise them a little bit.Nuosong was very beautiful, and the Chadong boat family was too embarrassed to praise this beauty, so they only knew to give him a nickname "Yue Yun".Although no one had seen Yue Yun with their own eyes, they had a general impression, but they got a similar look from Yue Yun, who was born on the stage.