When Cha Wenbin remembered this incident, he had to mention one person, and that was my grandfather Xu Luban.

My grandfather was born in the thirties of the twentieth century, an era that Chinese would never forget for the rest of their lives: hunger, natural disasters, military rebellion, and Japanese invaders, all of which were dark words in my grandfather's memory.

My grandfather's ancestral home is Jinhua, Zhejiang, and he is a native of Pujiang, a small county town under Jinhua.

My grandfather was born on the way to escape the famine in northwest Zhejiang, and when he was born, he was carried by his parents in a pair of rice baskets, and he walked hundreds of miles and fled to the northwest of Zhejiang, which was still relatively closed at that time. Because it is located in a mountainous area, there are still many undeveloped wastelands and mountains, and farmers can have food if they have land. With food, you have the capital to live, and you can stay, and from then on, you can take root in this place called Hongcun in the northwest of Zhejiang.

The title of Xu Luban comes from one of his crafts: carpenter.

My great-grandmother was a very far-sighted woman who believed that her son would have to be able to provide for the family in the future. There are many people in Hongcun who have fled from Jinhua, and there are a group of people who have inherited a local job in Jinhua: Dongyang wood carving, and his grandmother also planned to send him to learn wood carving, but he didn't want his grandfather to be completely interested in the small carving knife, but liked the more cumbersome planer and axe.

In this way, my grandfather became a carpenter through the delicate work of wood carving. Because he had learned wood carving, his furniture was much finer than that of ordinary carpenters, and he also had some knife work, so he became a well-known carpenter master in the local area.

In the days before the Cultural Revolution, the number of people who made furniture was decreasing, but a large number of people died of starvation due to natural disasters in three years, and many people were buried with a roll of straw mats. During that time, the furniture business could not be received, but there were people who came to customize the coffin, the grandfather's coffin was thick and solemn, and he was proficient in carving dragons and phoenixes and gilt paintings.

My grandfather was an honest man, married a woman who had fled from Jinhua as his wife, and the husband and wife ran the only coffin shop within a radius of 100 miles, and their lives were hard but also down-to-earth.

My grandmother gave birth to two boys and four girls, the youngest of whom was born ten years after her sterilization, so she was very fond of this daughter, she is my aunt, and the beginning of the story is also from her.

Because his grandfather's business was a dead man's business, he had always believed in that set of things, such as never mentioning the word "death" in their family speech, and they had to go to the village to burn some paper money every fifteenth day of the new year. Because of this, during the Cultural Revolution, he was put on a big hat for feudal superstition, and was pressed to fight in the streets, and almost didn't die in the hands of the Red Guards.

His acquaintance with Cha Wenbin was due to Ma Zhenren, that is, Cha Wenbin's master, at that time, Cha Wenbin was just a farmer who farmed at home, and he had some skills in his own hands but never used them. Because of saving his aunt that time, his reputation began to spread, and more and more people were looking for him, but Cha Wenbin had a good one, and he only did things for his conscience.

Many years later, Cha Wenbin found his grandfather alone one night, and he offered to make a coffin for himself, saying that only Xu Luban's coffin could make him sleep comfortably. At that time, my grandfather had not made coffins for many years, but when Cha Wenbin opened his mouth, he naturally would not refuse.

That night, my grandfather asked my grandmother to fry a few side dishes, and he and Cha Wenbin got drunk. Both of them were accustomed to seeing life and death, but they both cried profusely at the wine table that night. No one knows what they said to each other, because I had asked about this conversation, but my grandfather kept his mouth shut, and he brought the secret into the coffin.

My grandfather's father died at the age of seventy-three, and my grandfather used to get drunk and often say that he would only live to be seventy-three.

This year, my grandfather is seventy-three years old, and he is gone, of course, this is a later story.

He's been dealing with coffins all his life, so he's had a lot of weird things, and I used to sit on his lap and listen to him tell me those stories when I was a kid.

My grandfather's coffin shop didn't have a storefront, but he built two small bungalows on the side of the road in his house. The bungalow has two doors, one that opens outward for business and one that opens in the back. The door that opened inside was usually locked, and I had snuck in once or twice, and inside this door was a large warehouse, in which were all half-finished coffins or finished products that had been pre-ordered by others, in fact, it was a warehouse where coffins were parked.

The warehouse leads directly to the large house inside, and there is also a door, and on the outside of this door there is a small incense niche, on which incense ash and other miscellaneous things are splashed all year round. On the fifteenth day of the new year, my grandmother would prepare some tributes of cooked chicken and duck and put them on top.

It's eerie all year round, and it's cold outside, so in the summer, I like to go to that corner and play cards with my cousins. There is a time to play cards: after 4 o'clock in the evening, my grandmother will come to disperse us children, and we will not be allowed to go on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar calendar.

I asked my grandfather who they were for. My grandfather said it was for the people who came to pick the coffins, but I had never seen anyone touch the tributes. When I was a child, I was very naughty, and the children were greedy, and they felt delicious when they looked at the cooked chicken and duck, and the kind of baba made of glutinous rice ground into flour smelled good.

It was not only I who wanted to eat it, but my cousin also wanted to eat it, but I knew that I might be beaten up if I ate it, so I tricked him into stealing it. My cousin is only one year older than me, and when he was a child, he was sticky all day long, and he was quite bold, but he was a little silly, and in rural dialect, he was stunned.

At first, we were hungry for the roast chicken, but the chicken has wings and legs, and as long as it moves, it can be discovered, what should we do? Naturally, we have a trick, the chicken's chest is broken, and we tear the meat inside the chicken's belly with our hands, but do not touch what can be seen from the outside, anyway, these tributes will be taken by my grandmother and poured into the river in the end.

At first, we tore the cool meat and came down to satisfy our hunger, but once this thing started to move the first mouthful, we wanted to eat the second mouthful, and a chicken was quickly pulled out by the two of us until only one shell remained. The two children ate with greasy mouths, and finally set their eyes on the pair of chicken wings, which felt a great temptation, to move or not to move?

In the face of the temptation of food, we did not hold our firm position, but insisted that we would move, and by the time we found the bones on the ground, the chicken had already had a butt and a head.

It's too late to regret it, and it's impossible to restore the bones spit out by the chicken that you eat. This is about to be found out that there is a great possibility of being beaten, and the two children began to get anxious, tearing their heads to find a way, and finally I thought of a trick that was not a trick: use paper paste!

The color of this roast chicken is very close to the yellow table paper used for burning the dead, I think this place is dark and dark, my grandmother should not be able to find out so quickly, my cousin and I thought, really come to that day and then find a way, can survive for a while.

It was attached to the outside of the chicken rack with only bones left with yellow table paper, and a pair of wings were made in the same way. After doing all this, the two of us snuck away, and the adults didn't say anything until dinner. Tomorrow morning, my grandmother will throw away the tribute, her eyes are not very good, and she gets up early, as long as she fools this time, it will be fine.

The next day, when it was dawn, my grandmother really moved the tributes to the river and threw them away, and the chicken was not mentioned, I don't know if she didn't find it or deliberately didn't mention it.

With the first time, there will be a second time, and we do the same to destroy a new chicken, and we are complacent about our "clever" approach.

One night in the middle of the night, I was anxious to urinate, I groped for the convenience of going to the toilet, and a pair of candles were lit in my grandmother's hall all the year round, which were dedicated to all kinds of gods. When I went there, I walked through the hall and noticed that there seemed to be a person squatting in the corner, but I didn't pay attention because I was holding my urine so much. After urinating, the person was more than half awake, and when I went back, I saw that the person in the corner was gone, and I thought I was blind.

My cousin and I slept in the same bed, and I remembered that when I got out of bed just now, his side was empty, and when I came back, he was there again, so what did my cousin do just now? I pushed him, and he slept soundly, and when I saw that he didn't wake up, I fell asleep with him.

The next night, when I was sleeping in a daze, I felt the person next to the bed suddenly move, and then the moonlight outside the window, I saw my cousin sitting up, and then he opened the door and went out barefoot, without any clothes. I thought he was getting up at night to go to the toilet, so I shouted, "Brother, why are you going?" ”

The only thing that answered me was the "creak" of the wooden door.