When the night is low and the crescent moon is like a hook, wanderers thousands of miles away will think of that street, that city, and that teahouse. Ningyao Ancient Town is Zhang Zisong's dream hometown all his life.

Ning Yao's world is pure and kind, and his heart is rippling. The city is three miles square, and there are six city gates, one in the north and one in the south. Bird's-eye view of the ancient city, shaped like a god who wants to do not move*** south tail north, the east and west four gates are compared to the four legs of the turtle, so the folk have the saying of "turtle city".

The ancient residential houses in the city are all the courtyard houses of blue bricks and gray tiles, the axis is clear, the left and right are symmetrical, especially the brick cave style houses have a strong local atmosphere. In addition to waiting for a few acres of thin fields on weekdays, some residents here will do some small business according to the right time and place, and live a leisure life of half agriculture and half business. On the day of the market, the town will be very lively. The villagers of ten miles and eight villages came one after another, adults and children, and filled the entire old street of Hexi to the brim.

There is a well at the foot of the east side of the mouth of Hexi Street, according to legend, the water in the well is as gold as gold, Zhang Zisong's great-grandfather used the money earned by the dart game to take down this land, built a private house, the wall is high, the compound is deep. The first floor faces the street as a storefront, with brown, heavy wooden doors and antique copper door knockers. A "tea" flag was hung in front of the door to solicit business. There are brick steps to the second floor, the second floor is open on all sides of the circular lookout window, exquisite wood carving, brick carving and stone carving with a strong local flavor of paper-cut window flowers, the building body is bricked, the wooden floor is placed, the roof of the mountain is resting, five ridges and six beasts. The locals call this "Jinjing Tower".

Brew tea with the water in the golden well, the mist is topped, the color is bright and the taste is fragrant, the entrance is sweet, and the aftertaste is endless. Drinking this kind of tea often has the peculiar effect of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. And don't be afraid of greedy cups, no matter how much you drink, you won't feel bloated. Drinking before meals can increase appetite, drinking after meals can help digestion, drinking in leisure time can soothe the mind and clear the heart, drinking after fatigue can relieve fatigue and refresh the mind, drinking it all year round can prolong life, and drinking it for a while can satisfy hunger and quench thirst.

Therefore, Jinjinglou is the best teahouse in this ancient town of Ningyao. The guests in the teahouse are diverse and varied. Merchants gathered in the teahouse in twos and threes, breaking their fingers with each other through their sleeves, twisting and gesticulating, bargaining, or deafening, or whispering. A few cups of black tea also contributed to a business. The hawkers and carts who walk the streets and alleys often stop here, take a breath, drink a bowl of tea, smoke a bag of cigarettes, or take out a nest and pickles, and drink tea and have a lunch. There are also some residents' relatives and friends who come to visit and cannot receive them at home, so they often get up and greet relatives and friends: "Let's go, go to Jinjinglou for tea." ”

The old teahouse is not very well lit, and you can smell the woody smell of the old building from a distance. In the teahouse, there are several eight-immortal tables with patterned hollow flower carvings on all sides, equipped with several Qin stools, and the diligent shop rubs these old antiques into a layer of paste-like protective film. The teapots are all purple sand, with a handle on one side of the pot, and the spout is in the shape of a small lion. The tea stove in the store seems to have never been extinguished, always bubbling hot, dozens of thermos flasks are always full, when there are guests drinking tea, Xiao Er always carries a round tin pot, and keeps boiling water into the thermos flask in front of the tea guest, lest it be empty, let the guests chase after it, so as to snub the guests.

Opening a teahouse is a hard livelihood, Zhang Zisong's parents have to get up at two or three o'clock in the morning every day, and the four seasons remain the same. My father boiled water, and my mother wrapped the fermented noodles and chopped stuffing into all kinds of exquisite steamed buns and dim sum, and then cut the dried tea made of beans into shreds and scalded them with boiling water for later use. My father also had to carefully boil the toppings, cut the thin shredded ginger, and the half-cooked green garlic pieces. When everything is ready, it is already five or six o'clock, and the kitchen is neatly arranged with plates of green and white, sweet and delicious tea heads and steaming steamed buns, waiting for the old tea customers to come one after another.

Most of the people who come to drink tea are some age people in the town. Sunlight streamed in from the eaves, illuminating the wrinkled faces. The old people often stay for half a day, want to have a cup of "gaiwan", slowly taste the fragrance of tea, take a nap when they are sleepy, and sit for as long as they want, and the store will not issue an eviction order. And drinking tea with this "gaiwan" has a special particularity. Tea bowl, tea cover, tea boat, this set of three heads is also known as the "three cai bowl", the cover is the sky, the support is the earth, and the bowl is the people. The boiling water is washed down, and the lid is covered, which means that this heaven, earth and people are here.

Good utensils and good water should be paired with good tea. The tea used in Jinjing Tower is produced from the ancient tea trees on the Dieyun Cliff 500 miles away, and it is said that the oldest tree is 946 years old, and there are more than 1,200 tea trees on the Dieyun Cliff that are well preserved. And each piece of tea has gone through countless efforts of tea planters and tea makers before it can finally be turned into a good cup of tea. The life of tea is not only the instant bloom of fragrant flowers, but also the endless growth of culture and art.

History wanders between cups, and the most popular program in the teahouse is storytelling. There is also a group of enthusiasts who listen to books. Buy a cup of tea, sit there and drink it slowly, listening intently. Every time I hear the critical moment, I have a startled "pop", "I want to know what will happen next, and listen to the next decomposition", which satisfies people's appetites, and they have to come tomorrow. After a romance, it will take ten days and half a month to say the least. At this time, drinking tea is not the original intention. In the teahouse, some folk performances with strong local characteristics are sometimes staged. The most common are storytelling, drum books, pendants, and occasionally cameos such as lotus chatters, Qingyin, and money boards. No wonder people say that opera is an art watered with tea.

For everything in this teahouse, Zhang Zisong saw it from a young age. Now he and his brother Zhang Zibai have grown up. The parents are getting older, and they have thought more than once about letting their sons take over the business of Jinjing Building, but they have not been able to do so. The eldest Zhang Zibai has excellent academic performance, he and his younger disciple Zisong are in the town's Yueshan Academy to study in the primary school, and then Zibai's grades have been top-notch, the college entrance examination score is the first place in the local area, and was finally admitted to Tsinghua University. Zibai has now graduated with a doctorate and is a professor in Beijing. Zisong knew that it was impossible for his brother to give up his job in Beijing and return to his hometown to take care of the teahouse.

In Zisong's young memories, he has always lived in his brother's dazzling aura. Everyone asked him to take Zibai as an example, and secretly compared him with Zibai, as if Zisong was born to be the shadow of Zibai, which may be the sadness of the second child in a family. Zisong has been troubled by this more than once, he has tried to prove that he is not worse than his brother countless times, but Zibai's grades are too good, and it can even be said that he is one in a million. Zisong felt that his motivation was about to run out, but the pressure was more than enough. When Zisong was alone, he often fantasized that if his younger brother Zi Zhen was at home, he might not lose so obviously.

However, although Zi Zong is the biological brother of Zi Bai and Zi Song, he has already passed on to his biological mother's sister as soon as he was born, because the second aunt of the two brothers will not have children. On the day of Lu Zizong's full moon, the second aunt specially set up ten tables of "66 banquets" in the living room of the house. "66 Banquet" is the traditional famous food of Ningyao Ancient Town, loofah box, oil tea noodles, Chengsha rolls, lavender cakes, case buns, stuffed Lantern Festival, cloud slices of tofu, stone soft cakes, cloud cloud cakes, glutinous rice fire, Ruishou peach, jujube buns...... The table of good dishes is so greedy that the eyes are full of gold stars. The second aunt's family lives in Tai'an Fort, located in the gourd belly lane 6 kilometers southeast of Ningyao Ancient Town, Tai'an Fort is surrounded by water on both sides, the scenery is handsome, the compound is built by the mountain, the momentum is magnificent, the living room alone has 100 square meters, and there are rows of rare treasures, cultural relics and antiques placed in the house.

It was the luckiest few years for the second aunt's family, but then it was worse than one day, and the second aunt had to sell the home in Tai'an Fort and took the second aunt and Zi Zhen to Y City to work hard. That memory was extremely vague in Zisong's mind, and every time he asked his parents curiously, they never mentioned it.

In the depths of Zisong's memory, he had very little communication with his parents, which also became a direct cause for him to be taciturn and not good at words when he grew up. There will always be an outlet for catharsis after long-term depression, and time has polished Zisong into a complete nerd, but in Zisong's view, it is very happy to love books like life. Because books are a medium, in addition to promoting the progress of ideas, they also help a lot to expand interests, and I can't imagine how bad it would be to have no books in the world! A life without reading is equivalent to living in vain. Zisong hopes that he will be able to stand in the world like pines and cypresses in the future!

His efforts were finally not in vain, and after Zisong completed four years of college in a school in this province, he was successfully sent to Y City for graduate school. In the first half a year of arriving in Y City, Zisong was very unaccustomed to it. He is a native of the north, and he eats at least two bowls at home on weekdays, but the rice bowl used by southerners to eat is so small, and the surrounding classmates are full after eating one bowl. Growing up in the aura of his older brother, he couldn't help but care about the eyes of others.

One day Zisong suddenly thought of Zi Zong, who came to Y City with his second aunt a few years ago to work hard, and he hadn't seen him for so many years, so he didn't know how his biological brother was doing? He asked his second aunt for the phone number from his mother, and on the weekend he brought a bag of gifts to visit them. Zi Song pinched the note with the address of his second aunt's house, asked 3 people at the nearby bus stop, and walked around the dilapidated alley for a long time, only to see a small wooden door with peeling paint written on the house number he was looking for, Zi Song was surprised for a long time, and walked forward and knocked on the door tremblingly.

After waiting for about two minutes, there was a creaking sound from the old floor of the room, and an old woman hunched over opened the door impatiently, her dazed eyes looking at the visitor in surprise through her rusty reading glasses. Relying on his vague memory, Zisong could tell that the woman with gray temples in front of him was his second aunt, and shouted in a dumb voice: "Auntie, I'm here." The second aunt couldn't help but take the gift in his hand, and let Zisong into the house with a numb gaze.

The concrete walls of the living room were low and damp, the faucet in the toilet was dripping with water, and Zisong sat cramped on the edge of the soft and collapsed sofa, his legs rubbing uneasily against the leather crumbs falling off from the sand layer. He asked speechlessly, "The second aunt is out?" No one answered for a long time, Zisong raised his head in surprise, met the second aunt's dull gaze, and the air froze for a while. Zi Zong noticed the movement outside, and came out very enthusiastically to greet him, and invited Zi Song to the inner room to talk. Zi Zong whispered to his brother quietly for a while, and Zi Song knew that his second aunt was imprisoned for stealing, and he is currently doing well in prison, and his sentence has been reduced by six months, and he will be released after half a month, no wonder his parents refuse to tell him the truth.

At that moment, Zi Song saw through the skinny reality - the sinister nature of the world. Most of the people in the world are stupid, they think they are very shrewd, but they consume themselves to compete for something that does not belong to them, and in the end, it is not a life that does not bring death without taking it. Zisong sympathized with Zi Zhen from the bottom of his heart, and he was suddenly glad that he was the second in the family, although he was compared with his brother by others since he was a child. At least he was sent to a doctorate under the guidance of his brother, and it will be no problem to find a job with his academic qualifications in the future.

Zisong suddenly regretted that he had come to visit, left his second aunt's house hungry, and walked in the dilapidated alleys, and he realized that he should do something for Zi Song and his second aunt. Zisong returned to the dormitory, and for the first time called his father for two and a half hours, discussing that he would let his second aunt help in the teahouse after he was released from prison, and hand over the craftsmanship in the teahouse to the second aunt and Zizhu, so that his parents would be at ease, and the life of the second aunt's family of three would also be settled. The father agreed with Zisong's idea, after all, he missed his own youngest son Zi Zhen very much, so as not to let his mother worry about his second aunt's family in the past few years.

On the day his second aunt was released from prison, his father and mother took a whole day train to pick him up in Y City. The second uncle's big bronze bell-like eyes were a little trance-like, and his cheeks deflated like deflated balls, and the old tears were all over the place. The mother held the second aunt in one hand and the son in the other, the second aunt and husband walked side by side with the father with their eyes lowered, and the son followed behind in a muffled voice carrying the cover roll.

The second aunt's family wandered in the field for most of their lives, and finally returned to their hometown where they were young, and their mother was busy packing up two houses to settle them. The next day, when his parents were preparing morning tea in the teahouse, Zi Zhen was learning to do it on the side, and his father looked at Zi Zong's serious gaze lovingly, remembering that he had also taken over this important responsibility from his father's shoulders in this way. The sky outside gradually brightened, and the tea guests filled the room one after another.

Father in the teahouse busy all his life, can finally be happy, he three days two ends to invite a few old friends to play chess, mahjong, the sea and the sky, talk and laugh, unrestrained, is really the joy of life. The old people sit in the bustling old teahouse with a teapot, drinking tea and smoking leaf cigarettes, and they can set up a dragon gate array for an afternoon. The air was filled with the choking smell of tobacco leaves, mixed with the sweet and bitter tea that steamed from the cup, and mixed together tasted strange, like burning moldy straw.

Outside the carved window, the bluestone is late. On the horizon, the ancient full moon is rising repeatedly.