Tanchi is a small old county town.

It is said that in ancient times, the surrounding mountains were filled with sandalwood trees. Later, there were tribes living by the river at the bottom of the mountain, and they gradually began to work here to live and reproduce. Later, there was a tulou castle here. Therefore, in the Shang and Zhou periods, it was named Tanchi, which means the city of Tanxia.

Although the time has come to the 80s of the 20th century, whether it is the door and plate shops on both sides of the city street, or the ancient pastoral temple of monks in the west mountain col outside the city. There are also the stone pavement that has been polished over the years in the alley and the chastity archway in front of the ancient building on Fireworks West Street; Not to mention the lying drinking table of Liu Ling, one of the seven sages of the Wei and Jin Bamboo Forest outside the West City Gate, the cornerstone is still faintly visible on the surface...... There is no trace, there is no room, the curtain is on the ground, and the indulgence is like the ......" of the official book. All of them show people the history and elegance of this place.

Therefore, people who have been to Tanchi all feel that Tanchi is ancient!

Because of the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, some children of rich families also went to Europe to study abroad after hearing about the development of Western learning and the fashion of big cities. When they returned, there were more buildings in the ancient city, but there were no buildings with curved roofs and eaves when they saw blue bricks and roses. Many years later, people called it the style of the Republic of China, which added a bit of a strange style to this antique ancient city.

People who have been to Tanchi like the ancient silence in the old houses here, meditate on the old marks on the head of the old city here, and enjoy the carved gatehouses and the willow bones on both sides of the streets and alleys, as well as the fragrance of the locust trees on the city wall in April.

Tanike is still beautiful!

To the east of the city is the March River, which has a flat bank, which winds slowly from the mountains in the distance to the east, and begins to go around the city at the place of Tanchi for three or five miles, during which it carries the moat that connects the south and north of the city from the west, and then winds its way to the southwest, flowing to the ancient canal hundreds of miles away.

And this circumambulation led to a long river beach, which was covered with fine white veil. Then up the beach is the slope of the locust tree.

The scenery of this inlet beach slope forest stretches, and it is mostly a place for children to play during the day, and a place for women to wash and dry on sunny days. It is often the sound of women's laundry mallets mixed with the joy of children, and it reverberates rhythmically in the river bay!

However, as soon as night came, it became the Garden of Eden where boys and girls met and whispered and shook their hands. The white sand under the moon, the light breeze in the locust forest, and the shining river surface, I don't know how long Rouman is!

I heard the old people say that in ancient times, the river was cold, the river was shallow and windy, and the river surface would be frozen in less than half a month every year in winter, and it would not be completely thawed until March of the following year, and the scales flowed in the sun. Therefore, it has been called the March River since ancient times.

If it is the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, when the day will break, climb on the city wall, look at it by the railing, see the river slowly moving in the glow, and the morning light in the distance, which makes people feel comfortable, sighing that the vastness of the world is beautiful and long!

Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, there have been more unique landscapes along the river in March, and Westerners wearing long robes, high noses and concave eyes have somehow come here. A high church was built on the north bank of the river more than three miles away from the south gate of the city, and several Western villas overlooking the river were built in the fields not far away.

This scenery is like an oil painting every time under the sunset, teaching people to be obsessed!

Yes, Tanchi is ancient! Tanike is beautiful! Also, Tanchi is very culturally precipitated!

……

On this day, Qiu Zichuan, who had breakfast, returned to the back room, took out a few books with uneven thickness and no cover from under the pillow on the bed he slept on, stuffed them into the pockets of his shorts, kicked the slippers made from worn-out plastic sandals, and walked out of the house lazily.

In more than a week, the summer vacation will be over, and he will enter the county middle school for the first year of high school.

It's a summer vacation with no summer assignments.

Since the fall of the "Gang of Four~Four"! In the past few years, the school has been so tight! It seems that when I first entered elementary school, there were often either criticism meetings or labor classes in school. Now the atmosphere in the school is very different, and the teachers are beginning to raise their eyebrows, and they are all talking about the importance of knowledge! The teaching began to be formal, and the homework began to be assigned in large quantities, and it was really uncomfortable at the beginning!

Fortunately, my mother, who had studied in a girls' middle school in the provincial capital for several years with her capitalist father before liberation, never relaxed her supervision of her homework in private, and sometimes she was even extremely strict! This time I was nervous about studying, and after a few years, Qiu Zichuan still didn't feel that there were many obstacles!

It's been several years since the college entrance examination!

When I left the junior high school before the summer vacation, my extremely kind but very eccentric head teacher, who was said to be a member of the Kuomintang Three Youth League before liberation, patted her shoulder, stared at herself, and said emotionally: The hope that our class can be admitted to the university in the future is all pinned on you!

Qiu Zichuan didn't know what university was, only that it was a place that his mother revered very much. After listening to the old lady's earnest advice, I wondered if all the women in the past worshiped the university.

But Qiu Zichuan knows that it is difficult to get into college, because, it has been several years since he took the high school entrance examination, and it seems that there are only no more than seven or eight people in the entire Tanchi County who can be admitted to college every year, but there seem to be a few more last year!

I heard that when I got to the county middle school, I would be divided into classes, and I would be divided into several classes according to the quality of my grades, and what kind of arts and sciences classes would I need.

Whatever! Don't worry about your grades anyway!

Qiu Zichuan's father died early, a few years after the start of the Cultural ~ Revolution, I don't know what happened, his father, who was also from a capitalist family, didn't come back from work one day. It wasn't until a long time later that my mother, who went to the factory to look for it, and people found my father's body in the warehouse of the factory. Later, some people said that they were scared by exercise and had a heart attack! And people went to sports, and no one noticed that my father, who still went to work on time and was serious about sticking to his post, was isolated and helpless in a huge warehouse.

Qiu Zichuan remembered that his mother didn't seem to cry much at that time, and with the help of a few relatives, friends, neighbors and co-workers, he simply buried his father, and the matter passed quickly.

But later, Qiu Zichuan often heard his mother sobbing alone in the middle of the night!

There is no father in the family, and the income is less than half. But Qiu Zichuan has only one sister, a family of three, relying on his mother's salary, compared with a large number of families, life is still good.

It's just that since then, there has been a lot less joy in the family! There was a bit of a dreary atmosphere. And in such an atmosphere, reading, finding books to read became Qiu Zichuan's biggest hobby later!

Coming to the street, Qiu Zichuan was still lazily kicking slippers, passing through the bustling Wenyuan Street, which was originally a school run by several large families at the beginning of the Republic of China, and the whole street was named Wenyuan Street, and it was changed to a farmers' market in the later period of the Cultural ~ Revolution. Here and then through the quiet Mengjia Hutong, the front is to the east gate of the city.

This summer, Qiu Zichuan repeated this direction every morning, just to go to the March River outside the East Gate, where he wanted to escape the heat, to be precise, he was going there to read the few books without covers in his pocket.

It's so pretty! He Qiu Zichuan couldn't have imagined that there were such good-looking books in the world, not only fascinating, but also fascinating! It's a pity that it's too hot at home, and the sister who runs in and out always interrupts her thoughts. Therefore, a few days after getting these rotten books, Qiu Zichuan suddenly thought about how good it would be to go to the woods by the river outside the city to read, cool and silent without disturbance!

As a result, the most remote meadow in the locust forest by the river in March has become Qiu Zichuan's natural reading room.

Out of the east gate of the city, there is a field. This season, the green corn has passed the height. Along a path leading to the river in the field, Qiu Zichuan still lazily kicked his slippers and walked forward.

……

"Huh!"

Along the path by the river, when he was about to walk into the small meadow in the Huai Forest, Qiu Zichuan found the "intruder", a girl in a white pink flower dress, sitting on the grass, leaning on the old tree she leaned on every day and reading a thick book intently.

Qiu Zichuan wanted to go over and tell the girl that this was his own place.

But I laugh at myself! People care about you! Who stipulates that's your place!

Stopping, Qiu Zichuan looked left and right into the woods, he was thinking about finding himself another secluded place to read.

At this time, the girl also saw Qiu Zichuan, and when she saw that the boy had come here, she stopped, and then looked left and right, as if she felt that the place where she was reading the book turned out to be someone else's. Because when I came to the riverside locust forest and saw this small meadow, especially when this old tree followed, it was obvious that there were traces of people sitting and lying here.

"Is this your place?" The girl was generous and asked heartily.

Qiu Zichuan, who was unhappy in his heart, was embarrassed and cramped at this time, and he didn't know how to speak, so he turned around. I thought to myself where this girl is, and she still speaks Mandarin, why haven't I seen it before, Tanchi is so big, and there are a few people in the city who don't know anyone.

"It's weird!" Listening to the girl behind her, she snorted.

Seeing that there was a small slope covered with grass in the locust forest, and there was a thicker locust tree next to it, just enough to rely on reading a book, Qiu Zichuan walked straight over.

When he came to the tree, Qiu Zichuan first took out all the books from the two pockets of his shorts, then sat down and began to pick up the one that he hadn't finished reading yesterday from five or six books.

To be precise, the few books that Qiu Zichuan carries around like a baby every day, in fact, none of them are complete, all of them are picked up by his good classmate Wu Weidong from the warehouse managed by his mother, who is the administrator of the reading room of the county library, and they are all survivors of the "four olds" in the Cultural ~ Revolution, and they are all torn fragments and rotten volumes, that is, the thickest volume is less than fifty pages! If it was the whole book, he Wu Weidong wouldn't be able to steal it.

But it was this fragment and bad volume that also made Qiu Zichuan, who loved books like his life, like a treasure.

Less than 40 pages of "Song of Youth", 32 pages of "Water Margin", 42 pages of "Fire King Kong", 38 pages of "Young Guard", 20 pages of "Maupassant's Short Story Collection" is half "In the Woods", half is "Adopted Child", and the longest book is "Dream of Red Mansions", but Lin Daiyu disappeared as soon as she appeared!

What's going on with Yu Yongze and Lin Daojing? Who are the 100 singles and eight generals of Liangshan? Who won in the end between Shi Gengxin and the captain of the pig's head team? Is it love like that between Oleg and Nina? And why did Lin Daiyu's girls at that time be like that?

This summer vacation, by the beautiful March River, Qiu Zichuan is not so much reading as guessing.

But, Qiu Zichuan is happy!

Because, in this pile of fragments, Qiu Zichuan saw a fresh world; In this non-stop, even repetitive guessing, Qiu Zichuan seems to have smelled a breath of fresh air! In what he had never done in his previous life, he knew, or re-skimmed what was good and what was cunning! He knew that in addition to friendship in this world, there is also a kind of interaction called righteousness! Also, he seems to have vaguely known that love is a different kind of love from the movies he watched before! Also, brave female Komsomol members, delicate and weak women, majestic guerrillas!

This summer, Qiu Zichuan is not only happy, but also constantly overflowing with a surge in his heart! A kind of hazy! There is even a yearning that I can't tell!

"Huh! What kind of books are you reading? ”

With his back against the locust tree, Erlang's legs crossed, and the slippers made of plastic sandals thrown aside, Qiu Zichuan, who was reading with relish, was so shocked by this cold question that he hurriedly straightened up, turned his head and raised his face! Seeing that it was the girl who had occupied his place just now, Qiu Zichuan hurriedly leaned over and packed up the several fragments scattered beside him and took them to the other side of his body. Then, looking up again, he asked:

"What?"

"Huh! Look at your panic! Looking at Qiu Zichuan's embarrassed appearance, the girl's hand held a handkerchief, pressed it against the tip of her nose and laughed "giggle"!

"I don't know you!" Qiu Zichuan blinked, not knowing whether he should sit up or continue to sit at this time. At school, Qiu Zichuan didn't like to talk to female classmates.

But at this time, Qiu Zichuan found that the girl standing in front of him in a dress was very beautiful! There is a trace of curly hair floating under the lace straw hat, a slightly upturned nose is delicate and small, a pointed mouth, especially the squinting eyes with a very pure but confusing look!

"What are you looking at me for?" The girl held the book in front of her chest with both hands and shook her body gently, as if she was deliberately teasing Qiu Zichuan.

"I didn't look at you!"

"Haha! Ha ha! This time, the girl put the handkerchief to the tip of her nose again, leaned back and laughed!

At this time, Qiu Zichuan saw that the girl was wearing water-red leather sandals on her feet, which were rarely seen on Tanchi Street, and he also smelled a faint smell of perfume on the girl's body.

Qiu Zichuan, who was at a loss, quickly stood up, glanced at the girl who was still "giggling", and quickly squatted down, picked up the few fragments on the ground, and hurriedly walked away with his head down.

At this time, there was another "giggle" laugh behind him!

……