On a dull and quiet morning in February, the spring cold is steep, and the streets and alleys are filled with the sound of cans and cans of steamed buns. When the foals and mules heard the sound of the bangs, they cried out of the upper room with their grandmother's clothes. Bai Zhao was dragged by his two grandsons, but his face was filled with a kind and warm smile, and his two hands were holding copper and hemp money under the placket. Jiaxuan stilted out of the threshold of the mansion and blocked the way of the mother-in-law and grandson in the courtyard: "Mom, from today onwards, the partial food for the two of them will be cut off." Bai Zhao's benevolent face suddenly darkened, and he looked at his son, obviously surprised and stunned. Jiaxuan explained: "You shouldn't eat picky food anymore, they're too old. People say, 'The rich man is used to mules and horses, and the poor man is used to dolls'. Our family is a mule and horse doll, and we are not pampered. Bai Zhao seemed to have an understanding, his face was full of life, he looked down at the two cute heads that were attached to his waist, raised his face and said to his son, "This is a tail." Jiaxuan still didn't change his words: "When it is broken, it will be broken." Forget it, let's start from now. Bai Zhao stuffed the copper and hemp money that had been stacked into the palm of his hand into the pocket under the placket, and turned around angrily: "Your heart is so hard!" The foals and mules were so aggrieved that they wept and mourned, and were dragged by their grandmother's hands to the upper house.

The sound of bangzi in the streets and alleys rang more frequently, and the dry and crisp shouts became louder and louder: "Jars and cans of steamed buns—rabbit buns—pomegranate buns—selling them—" Xiancao turned his head from the loom and said, "Go and drive the steamed bread seller away, and tell him to shout at the gatehouse, which makes the babies cry." Jiaxuan instead laughed and said: "People are shouting in the streets and alleys, and they haven't come to our yard to shout, why are they shouting?" It is good to shout and shout, so that the horses and mules hear the tambourine of the buns and sweets, just as they hear the shouting of the spicy people. Xiancao bit her lip and repeated her mother-in-law's words: "You are really hard!"

The two children have grown up to be of school age. The two sons looked very much alike, like two bricks fired in a kiln poured out of a wooden mold; Despite the age difference of one year, the younger brother's mule foal is not only not lower than the elder brother's foal, but also thicker and more stocky than the older brother. They are all like their father Jiaxuan, and they are also like the dead grandfather Bingde, the entire facial organs are trying to bulge out, the bridge of the nose is bulging, the mouth is bulging, the eyeballs are bulging and the eyebrow bones are bulging. As we age, this bulging facial feature becomes more and more prominent.

Bai Jiaxuan likes these two sons too much. He often looks intently at the bulging face when the child is not looking, but he can't say affectionate words or show affection. The child and his grandmother are inseparable, day and night, he has hardly carried them, let alone walked around and watched the play like ordinary farmer with his son around his neck. Now, seeing that his son should be a student, he can no longer let his grandmother tell them about cats and dogs. Bai Jiaxuan is planning to establish a school in Bailu Village. More than 100 families in Bailu Village have always sent their children to Shenhe Village in seven or eight miles to study, and Bai Jiaxuan went out early and returned late to study there for five years. He didn't want to start the school for the convenience of his two sons, but he felt that it was up to him to make it happen. The school is located in the ancestral hall. The ancestral hall was in disrepair, although it was a sacred place to worship the ancestors, but after all, it was the official property of the public and no one cared about it, and the five halls and six houses were covered with fallen leaves and dirt, green moss embroidered and woven, and the grass grew to a height of two feet; The rafters become an ideal nest for sparrows to lay eggs and hatch their chicks; The mud skin of the walls peels off the slag; The bricks were hollowed out by rats under the bricks, and the bricks sank. Bai Jiaxuan wanted to come forward to completely renovate the old ancestral hall, and then set up a school in the village here. His name will be as immortal as the ancestral hall and the academy.

The ancestral hall is as old as the village, but there are no books of bamboo and paper that have survived. I can't figure out when there were people here, and I can't tell who the first ancestor who came to this original slope to dig a hole or build the first thatched hut was. Frequent disasters have destroyed the village hundreds of times, and the people who have come after have reunited and continued to multiply, perhaps the original survivors. Disasters destroy villages, history and memory, and only absurd legends endure. The flooding of the Zishui River pushes the village step by step from the river to the roots of the original slope until it is forced up. Legend has it that during a devastating flood that occurred during the night, those who were lucky enough to escape to the high slopes sat bare-bottomed until dawn, pulled a handful of vines from the red fields to their waists, covered the most secret parts of men and women, and searched for shovels and axes sunk into the mud in a yellow soup; In the ancestral hall, the wide shaft of the gods and the rafters purlins that record the ancestors and ancestors were washed away by the flood without a trace, and the history of the village was broken.

Legend has it that another year three dog days fell fire, as big as a copper basin and as small as a bean grain, fireballs poured down, and houses were burned to ashes; People, cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, and dogs were all scorched, unable to rescue and escape, and naturally none of them were spared; The sacred shafts and rafters in the ancestral hall were reduced to ashes again, and the history of the village was once again blank. As for the locusts becoming sperm and the plague spreading, it has become a small disaster and is not worth talking about. The old man living in Bailu Village today said calmly that the number of households in this village will never exceed 200, and the population will never exceed 1,000.

Later, a very thoughtful patriarch of this village proposed to change the original Houjia Village (Hujia Village) to Bailu Village, and at the same time decided to change his surname. The two old brothers of the Hou family (or Hu family) want to occupy all the auspiciousness of Bailu, and agree that the people of the clan elder will be surnamed Bai, and the children and grandchildren of the second series will be surnamed Lu; The rule that the two surnames of Bailu sacrifice together in an ancestral hall has always maintained the blood relationship of the same root and the same species to the present. It is said that Bailuyuan set off a trend of changing the name of the village at that time, Luqian Village, Luhou Village, Luhuitou Village, Luming Village, Luwo Village, Lucao Village, Lujiao Village, Luhoi Village, and so on. A successor county official was newly enthroned, and his head was swollen by these villages named after deer, and he ordered that all the original village names be restored, and only Bailu Village and Bailu Town were allowed to keep the two names related to deer.

The eldest with the surname Bai and the second with the surname Lu made rules at the beginning of the construction of the ancestral hall, and the patriarch was inherited by the descendants of the white surname of Nagato. It was originally an iron rule that imitated the emperor's succession in the court, and it was indisputable. After the death of the old patriarch Bai Bingde, it is a legal matter for Bai Jiaxuan to succeed as the patriarch. In the first few years after his father's death, on every sacrifice day, when Bai Jiaxuan knelt on the main altar to worship his ancestors, he always couldn't help but panic and feel relieved; When the woman in the seventh room, Xiancao, gave birth to her first son, the disease of panicking and loose hair did not heal itself. Now, Bai Jiaxuan walked into the courtyard of Lu Zilin's house with a detailed and careful plan for repairing the ancestral hall in his arms.

This is the most beautiful courtyard house in Bailu Village and even in the entire Bailu Plain. It is the masterpiece of Lu Zilin's old lady. The old lady had a bad life, begging for food and drink, and wandered to the city of Xi'an, where he first carried water and pulled bellows in a restaurant, and later learned a cooking stunt. A senior official of the southern tour passed through Xi'an and ate his roasted gourd chicken, and blurted out with joy: "The first spoonful in the world." So he made a fortune, so he bought a field in Bailu Village, and then built a first-class courtyard house in Bailu Plain. His great success inspired the descendants who tempted the stubble and croppers, and put down the plough stick to operate the iron spoon and spatula, which set off the study of cooking fever after a century, and Bailu was famous for being a spoon and spoon inside and outside the provincial capital. However, since the old lady, among the four generations of Lu Zilin, there is no man in the Lu family who holds a spoon and shovel, and outsiders never expected that when the "first spoon in the world" Xie Shi, he would leave such a will: "I have been serving people all my life, and I have no interest." Fight for a breath and let people serve you to glorify your ancestors. One of the showmen went to my grave to put a string of grass cannons, and he was hit by lifting people to release thunder cannons, and he was hit by Jinshi...... Put three bangs. "Lu Zilin's grandfather, grandfather, father and himself did not fulfill the old lady's last wish, except for hiring long-term workers to do crops, they did not become people to serve; Although generation after generation of dogs and grinders are dedicated to providing their children with education, they have never even had the luck of putting a string of grass cannons on the old lady's grave. The old lady's bones must have turned to dirt, but his last words were like the shochu in the cellar getting fresher and fresher the longer it lasts. Lu Zilin sent him to Shenhe Village School for enlightenment in the first month of the year when his son was just seven years old, and he checked the dictionary overnight before choosing Zhaopeng as his son's scientific name, which means very earnest and very clear. The second son, Zhaohai, was just sent to school in the first month of this year, and the two sons were yelled at by him every day to go to school. Zhaopeng Zhaohai's face was frozen, and his hands and feet were dripping with yellow water. The mother complained that the child was too young to go to school too early, and Lu Zilin unwaveringly puffed up and said, "I'm waiting to go to the old lady's grave to put the gun!"