One evening in mid-April 1976, a man with a burden on his shoulder hurried home in the twilight on a road called Qilichong, which was on a road called Qilichong, which was towing a wooden ridge. His name is Yan Yongnong, a man from the wooden ridge. There are no less than 30 miles of mountain roads to the home, and there are no more than 30 miles of ditches and ditches along the way, potholes, left and right turns, and it is really enough to walk up and down the mountains!

The main mountain of Yangmei Mountain is towering into the clouds, and the mountain range winds for dozens of miles, like a giant dragon standing on the mountains of southern Hunan. This is a natural barrier, which prevents people from entering and exiting the mountains and cannot enter. Especially if you invite a person from outside the mountain to drink wine and eat meat, he will not want to! The outsider said: "I am too lazy to go, eat strong and walk thin." ”

Yes, this heavy mountain hinders the direct contact between people in and outside the mountain, and this vast and long road separates the accommodation between the countryside and the town. Children are less than 10 years old, and adults will not take them out of the mountains because they do not have enough physical strength and foot strength to complete the long journey. On the way, when the child goes soft, it is inevitable that he will have to carry it on his back, and the adults themselves are tired and lame, and they wish that someone would help them and pull them, so how can they have the strength to carry the child on their backs? No matter how filial piety there is, the sons and daughters can't bear to carry the bamboo sedan chair behind the old man, and when the old man can't walk, he carries the rock climbing across the stream. Most of the women in the village who came from the old society, belonging to Yan Yongnong's previous generation, most of them have wrapped their feet, and their little feet are trembling when they walk, not to mention that they can't go far up the mountain and down the ridge even if they walk on the flat road, so they have become frogs at the bottom of the well since they married into the wooden ridge. Only a very small number of individual daughters who have raised Lilu (with plate eyes) daughters are fortunate enough to go out to see the world. Their daughters married and raised outside the mountains, and on the day of being a "wishing girl", the son-in-law's family would ask someone to carry a sedan chair to pick up the in-laws to be "grandma".

"Go to the streets, go into the city. This is an appointment between middle-aged and young people, envying those women, children and old people who can't get out of the door. For Yan Yongnong, a man who has grown up in a deep ravine for more than 30 years, it is not difficult to walk this road. In another three or four hours, he will be able to eat the fragrant rice of steamed bacon on the noodles that his wife put in the pot. Then his wife boiled a bucket of hot water for him, and he threw himself into it to soak and enjoy his wife's work such as wiping his back and pinching his feet.

Since the beginning of spring, Yan Yongnong has gone out of the mountain for the first time. He came out today to get some goods, and in the baskets hanging from the two ends of the flat pole were toothbrushes, soap, and laundry detergent that he used every day; oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, bowls, plates, basins, and spoons, as well as clothes, shoes, and socks that he bought for his wife and daughter. There are also snacks such as twist flowers, steamed buns, biscuits, rock candy and other snacks that my daughter likes to eat, in short, there are two big baskets stuffed with miscellaneous things.

The baskets at both ends of the pole jumped up and down on his shoulders and his steps, and the ropes rubbed against the pole to make a rhythmic "squeak, squeak". The mountain breeze brings a mixture of rhododendrons, wild lilies, wild roses and more. At this time, the red mountains on the mountain are blooming red, clusters, clusters, all over the mountains, and they are about to disappear into the black curtain. The lark in the woods: "Ahh "Singing the most happily, Nighthawk 'oh haha' from time to time interjected twice, and there was a 'chirp' to accompany the singing------, Yan Yongnong was infected and couldn't help humming a mountain song:

Jun'an people enjoy the peace

Listen to the sages and sigh the ancient and modern

The universe will never change

As soon as the remnant of winter is over, it is the new spring

Once a son of heaven and a courtier

Pangu split for thousands of years

Three Emperors and Five Emperors Xia, Shang and Zhou

The Spring and Autumn Period, the Qin and Han dynasties, and the Three Kingdoms

Two Jin Southern Dynasties and Northern Dynasties

Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties

The Great Qing Dynasty is full of blessings

It's easy to start a business, but it's hard to keep a business

Good generals and virtuous ministers protect the society

Guotai Min'an weather is fresh

Dominate the mountains and rivers for thousands of years-----

The song is the beginning of "Zhong Jiu Haocao".

This Chong, called "Seven Mile Chong", is actually more than seventeen miles under the name of seven miles. Hearing the voice of a person in front of me, it was rare to see someone for a long time, and it was difficult to walk up and turn around, rugged and tortuous, and break the footboard.

When Yan Yongnong stopped to breathe after singing, he heard a faint sound of a different bird, a bit like a night owl barking. He stopped and listened closely, it should be a child's cry, just ahead. He took out a flashlight and followed the sound, and sure enough, a little boy of about five years old was sitting on a bluestone slab on the side of the road in front of him.

He asked aloud, but there was no response. He thought that the child's adult was nearby, and then shouted: "Which house is the house where the child is here?" (Which family is this? Which child has dropped the child?) Yan Yongnong rested his burden and turned his ears sideways to listen carefully, and what answered him was the call of the wind, the cooing of birds, and the echo of the distant mountains.

Yan Yongnong had no choice but to turn around and kick beside the child and ask: "En, which house is the house of the child, the tooth lady is called Mo Shi? Don't be afraid! Wow, I'm going to be gone." (Which family are you a child??What is your grandmother's name?Don't be afraid, tell me, I'll send you back.) The boy stared blankly at Yan Yongnong with a pair of pitiful eyes, as if he couldn't hear what he was saying. Yan Yongnong asked what he had just said again, but the kid still maintained his original demeanor.

"Could it be that this child is deaf or dumb?" Yan Yongnong thought, and then played along the train of thought: "It may not be that some ruthless parent deliberately took out a disabled child and threw it away? No, there will be no such grandmother in the world." Even a cat or dog that has been raised for four or five years is reluctant to lose it, let alone a person, and a boy with long eyebrows and beautiful eyes. Then it must be that the child loses his heel, such a child can neither speak nor hear the sound, once the heel comes out, it is especially easy to lose. ”

Since the child was left on the way to drag the wooden ridge, nine times out of ten it was dragging the wooden ridge.

Yan Yongnong has lived in the mopping ridge for decades, and there is no adult who does not know or is familiar with the mopping ridge, but the children can't recognize it all. He pointed his flashlight at the child's face and made sure it looked like an adult in the village. He looked horizontally, vertically, left and right, but he couldn't find a familiar facial feature.

He thought the child was mute and knew that he couldn't communicate with him with words, so he tried to help with gestures. But he didn't know how to speak dumbly, and he had only seen dumb gestures. He gestured as he spoke: he pointed his finger at the child, then at himself, and then along the road, and then said, "Well, follow me and go back to the country, okay?" He didn't understand what the child was shaking his head, whether the child didn't understand what he meant and whether he understood what he meant and didn't want to go back with him.

"Are you going or not going? (Dialect) Yan Yongnong said with a complaining tone. He didn't forget to point his hand forward and then retract his hand twice to express the meaning of the first half of the sentence, and he couldn't make gestures to express the meaning of the second half of the sentence. He looked eagerly at the child, hoping for a definite answer, but the boy replied to him with a dead look.