The pond pit dug by the embankment provides convenience for children to play with glue. The boy ran to the construction site, his mouth was as sweet as honey: "Uncle, brother" kept shouting, and the migrant workers knew the children's intentions, and threw the clay blocks they had picked up and threw them on the edge of the pit.

The children carried them to the wheat field, and beat them the stones, so that the cement was soft and tough, and the cooked cement was like plasticine.

The children used the broken clay to compete in the "tile house", and kneaded the clay into a "tile house" in the shape of a small basin with a large bowl mouth. Find a smooth, flat place and drop the tiled roof down with the mouth facing down. With a "pop" sound, a hole broke at the bottom of the tiled house, and the louder the sound, the bigger the hole.

Whoever has a big hole in the tile house wins, and the one who loses uses his own cement to fill the hole in the tile house for the one who wins, and then compares again, and the sound of "pop, pop" on the wheat field keeps ringing. It wasn't until the school bell rang that the children put their clay in the shade of the stone and hurried to the school.

Compared with the tile house, knocking on the "child model" is the children's favorite, and the children have rummaged through the child models accumulated in previous years, more than hundreds, and less than a dozen.

Hao Hao took out a cloth bag from the kitchen pantry, which contained twenty or thirty child models. Most of them are self-knocked, dry clay children's molds, and the middle is convex outward. A few of them are brick-red with a concave middle, which is a child model that was bought to be used as a mold.

The children's child models are diverse, and Yoyo is an eye-opener. The shape is round, square, oval, semi-circular, etc., and the content mainly includes mythological characters, modern heroes, drama characters, zodiac signs, animals, living utensils, vehicles, etc.

Although the child model is small, it is generally not more than ten centimeters between square inches, but the pattern on it is particularly beautiful. Most of them are flowers, birds, insects and fish, Peking Opera masks, opera characters and folk auspicious patterns. Wu Song who fights tigers, Zhu Bajie who carries his daughter-in-law, Guan Gong who rides a horse and dances a knife, Maitreya Buddha who can accommodate a big belly, etc., as well as aircraft children, ship models, machine gun models, and cannon children.

Yoyo learned from the information on the Internet that the child model is a kind of children's toy fired with clay in the Central Plains, and the knowledge and origin of the child model have a certain connection with Buddhism.

It has been passed down from generation to generation by folk artists, forming a unique artistic style. Because most of the clay molds are human patterns, they are called "child models" (mu dialect).

There is no way to know who invented it, but it has greatly enriched the imagination and creativity of generations, cultivated people's pursuit of beauty, and its unique earthy flavor warmed people's lonely childhood.

Before the 80s, the child model that was popular in the countryside of the Central Plains was the main toy of rural children, and it also became a small window for them to understand the world and increase their knowledge, accompanying the children to spend a good childhood.

The child's model has rough lines, simple and bright. The shape is concise and exaggerated, vivid image, simple and heavy, highlighting the characteristics of personality, with high relief art characteristics, is a kind of miniature relief, become a tool for children's handicraft.

With the development of society and the mass production of machine-made toys, child models have inadvertently faded out of people's sight, and the inheritance of hundreds of years has gradually been interrupted.

In later generations, many old people wrote their memories of children's models in their memoirs. Decades have passed, and there is no trace of the years, but the image of "Mo'er" is still swaying in the candlelight of memory. This unforgettable folk toy once warmed their childhood dreams.

They even feel that it is not an exaggeration to include it in the list of intangible cultural heritage, but where are its inheritors? Some people are dedicated to the sorting and collection of child models, and the child models in the collection market are becoming more and more expensive, and the child models sold for a penny or two are sold for hundreds or thousands of yuan.

Youyou thought to himself, since fate has arranged for him to come to this era, and with the benefits of e-malls, warehousing parks and smart brains, he must do his best to make due contributions to this era. At present, the traditional folk art of child models is excavated and preserved.

The one who pushed the cart came again, and opened a sales outlet from Youyou's house, and this was the first time he came to Hantun Village. The shouting of people entering the village has also changed: "Rag shoes, rotten covers, broken hats that no one wears—broken hair, broken pieces of iron, and a child model." ”

When he was tired of shouting, he shook the rattle in his hand and knocked it for a while, and the children heard the shouting and rushed over, and after a while, the front of the grocery truck was crowded with a circle of small brains.

There are more children, mud whistles, and pottery chickens in the iron cage on the car than before. The boys' favorite is which piece of child model.

The child model is about a penny a penny or two cents or three, which looks very cheap, but for the children at this time, it still seems a bit expensive.

In order to get their beloved, the children ran home, tossed out some tattered linings (dialect: rags lining for rags, rotten covers for old cotton), and took out the messy hair that fell out of the grandmother's accumulated combing hair from the cracks in the wall, and wanted to dig three feet into the ground.

Once the things are in hand, they quickly rush out of the house, for fear that the merchant who will change the model of the child will go away if he is late. Seeing this, the wrinkled merchant knew that he had come to change his mold, and deliberately made a jingle of stacks of molds in his hand, and shouted: "Hey-change the child's model, hey--the pick, the pick, the rest is mine-" whetted the children's appetite.

If you can't find the scrap at home, you cry and ask the adults for a penny and a half coin, and pick a mold or two of your choice.

Youyou intercepted the merchant who went to Shimiao Village at the entrance of the village, bought all his child models, and also bought all his mud whistles and pottery chickens, and asked him how the child models were fired?

The old man paused slightly, but told her something about it. The mold is not specially fired, but when the brick kiln burns the bricks, it is entrained and burned out between the brick joints or gaps, which saves coal and does not waste space in the kiln.

The children bought new molds, and knocking on the children's molds became the main activity of their fun. Youyou followed Haohao a few times, and I couldn't put it down.

Knocking on the child model is really a fun activity, first roll the clay into long strips or make round cakes, press into the mold, and press it evenly for a while. Then gently knock the cement out of the clay mold, and a clay mold with a clear pattern and a convex shape is completed.

The windowsills and chicken coops of each house are full of children. Drying is an indispensable process for making a child model, and the good clay mold should be placed on the window sill in the shade to dry, and drying too quickly will cause the clay mold to crack. After drying, the clay mold is hard and shiny, and the protruding pattern is lively and pleasant, and it is collected for viewing and exchange.

After the child mold is dried, it must be put into the stove where the adults cook for half a day, and the last thing you see is the convex clay mold with ruddy color and crisp sound.

However, the final firing technology is very difficult to pass, the burned mud is ambiguous and ambiguous, and the quality is not up to standard, so it has to be invalidated because it is too "bran".

But in the hearts of children, even the waste child model has extraordinary significance, after all, it is the fruit of their own labor. Therefore, that child has a bunch of defective models that are reluctant to discard.

The whole production process of children's model toys is an exercise for children's hands-on ability, and it is also an enlightenment for children's wisdom. Friends often divide the winners and losers according to whose clay model is how much, and who has more child models, who has the capital to be proud of and envied by the little friends.

In the era of extreme material scarcity, toys are the currency in the hands of children, everyone can barter, used to exchange for various items and playthings time, the quality and scarcity of toys to determine the market value, but also use toys to attract partners or show goodwill. In short, children have their own inner world, and children have their own ways of being happy.

Hao Hao made hundreds of different child models in a few days, but less than ten were successfully burned, which made him happy. Didi followed behind him, also having a great time.