"It's hot in June, I can't borrow a fan, although I am a friend, you are hot and I am hot. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info"

I looked at the big characters on the small fan that the ink had not dried, put down the brush, and read it very angrily.

It took me two noons to weave this fan. Chop bamboo, cut thin strips, cut raw edges, carefully weave a small square of green and yellow strips horizontally and vertically, and then wrap the edge, on the handle, when this small bamboo fan that exudes the unique fragrance of bamboo is done, I am still interested, find out the ink brush, draw a plant of bluegrass on the fan surface, and write this popular limerick poem on the other side.

I looked at it with satisfaction, thought it was okay, put out the small bamboo strips that had been cut, and prepared to make persistent efforts, weave a fan, and give one to my mother and Sister Meiyu.

This year's climate is a bit unusual, the summer solstice has just arrived, and the weather is very hot. Countrymen can't do without fans when they enjoy the cool and summer. In their house, there is only one old fan of Guan Bo's mother's house, and I weave two bamboo fans to send it, whether it is good or not, it is always my heart, isn't it? So yesterday at noon, I turned out my father's tools when he was a carpenter, cut a clump of bamboo in the bamboo canopy under the front of the house, sawed and cut it dry.

I like to make some gadgets by myself. This may be inherited from the father. Before my father was recruited to go to the coal mine, he knew several trades at home. He can do the work of a carpenter, a mason, a mason, a sawyer. Of course, it's not very fine, half a bucket of water, and he can't make fine furniture. He has never studied with a teacher, of course, he must have stolen a teacher, and he has also received a lot of guidance from his seniors and friends in the village. For example, Zeng Sanhong, a mountain carving, and his father Zeng Qinghu were carpenters, and Hu Hansan, Liu Deyong's father, Liu Laoman, was a carpenter. They all showed their fathers how they did it.

Influenced by my father, I was interested in his knives and axes since I was a child, and when I was not working, I liked to make some wood, bamboo and other tricks to play by myself. I have all the knives, axes, saws, and planers at home, and my father is not at home, so I can toss and turn. I have made slingshots, wooden guns, wooden carts equipped with three boxes of bearings that can sit on people, etc., and I have woven fans out of bamboo strips. I sometimes wonder what kind of craft I should do when I grow up. Carpenter or carpenter?

Speaking of which, our Xinghua Village is a famous craftsman village in Fangyuan, but almost all craftsmen in the countryside are available in our village. Like carpenters, stonemasons, masons, tailors, painters, masons, tinkerers, etc.

Let's put it this way, the total population of our village is only more than 600 people, but there are always 40 or 50 craftsmen of all kinds. This refers to a master who can walk all directions with his own craft. As for the half-baked half-bucket of water, there are even more, that is to say, almost all the adult men in our village know all kinds of crafts.

Most of the villagers' crafts are passed down from family to family. It is said that when the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang, were fighting for the world, they washed Hunan with blood, so that most of Hunan was empty, and later the court ordered "pulling (moving) Jiangxi to fill Hunan" (Note 1), so that many people from Jiangxi and northern parts of the country moved to Hunan.

Xinghua Village is located in the southwest of Hunan Province, adjacent to the two Guangzhou, really vast and sparsely populated Nanban land, for some reason, most of the people who live in Xinghua Village are some craftsmen and craftsmen with a skill. After hundreds of years of living and multiplying, the population is increasing day by day, and our small mountain village has always been famous in the four townships.

Last summer, I saw someone weaving a fan out of bamboo, so I tried to make it, and it was easy to get it, and now most of the fans I use at home are woven by me.

I kept weaving bamboo strips with both hands, and hummed in a low voice the ballad sung by Bai Sheng, the day rat in "Water Margin" to outwit the birth gang:

"The red sun is scorching like fire, the fields and rice are half scorched, the farmer's heart is like soup boiling, and the prince and grandson shake the fan."

"Hey, monkey, what are you doing at home? If you don't leave, you'll be late. Hu Hansan's shout came from outside the door.

I looked up at the alarm clock on the table, one fifty, isn't it? There were still ten minutes left in class, and I was a little reluctant to put down the woven fan and bamboo strips, and went out to go.

Hu Hansan looked at me with both eyes, and didn't wait for me, but walked forward with a gloomy face. I was a little strange and caught up with him and asked:

"How did you get here? Where did you just go? “

"Don't go anywhere, I came here to call you."

His house is near the north of the village, and I have to pass in front of his house to go to school.

"Look at you, are you committing something? Was you scolded or beaten by your grandmother? “

"Nope."

"Then why are you upset?"

"My grandmother had a fight."

"Quarrel? What's the quarrel? Why? “

"Our family is going to build a house."

"Build a house? It's a good thing, it's too late to be happy to have a new house to live in, so why quarrel? “

"Well, you don't know, the new house that has been repaired is not sure who will live in, but we will be half exhausted. At noon, when my mother went home to eat, she and my father quarreled about it, and I was scolded by my uncle and father......"

My heart darkened, and I stopped talking. The two of them walked towards the school in a gloomy manner. Turning around the oil mill, I happened to see his uncle Liu Yingguo coming out of the yard. His father, Liu Laoman, followed behind with his head down, all the way to the brigade headquarters.

Liu Yingguo, the secretary of the brigade, and Liu Laoman are brothers, but there is a big difference in appearance, Liu Laoman is stocky and black, but Liu Yingguo is white and clean, with a big back comb, and there are always two pens in the pockets of the old military uniform jacket with four pockets, and he doesn't look like a good carpenter at all, but like a cadre in the district or a worker in the city.

I always heard the adults sigh that "every family has a scripture that is difficult to read", and I didn't understand what it meant at first, but after listening to it a lot, I naturally understood it. This is indeed true, like Liu Deyong, their family is in the same house for five generations, and more than 20 people eat at the same table without separation, which is also the only one in ten miles and eight townships, and there is no semicolon.

Their family is still a "military family" and a "five-good family" registered in the district and county (Note 2), and his uncle Liu Yingguo has been the secretary of the brigade for many years, the third uncle is a teacher, his father Liu Laoman is the production captain, his mother Tan Lanxiang is also a teacher in the village primary school, his cousin Liu Dewen is an officer in the army, and Liu Dewu drives a tractor in the brigade.

Liu Yingguo, the secretary of the brigade, had a fire in his belly, he never thought that Tan Lanxiang, the fourth brother-in-law who had always been well-behaved and obedient, would talk back to him, and what was even more infuriating was that the fourth Liu Laoman actually let his wife and himself talk back without saying a word. was so angry that his father's beard trembled, and when he waved his cane to beat the fourth child, he stumbled and fell to the ground. Now lying on the bed and humming.

It's not easy to run such a big family. Liu Yingguo is fifty years old, but he is still a grandson.

His grandfather, Mr. Liu Liyang, is over 90 years old and is the oldest birthday star in Xinghua Village. The old man was so strong in his life, resolute in character, upright, and famous for his excellent carpentry skills in his early years.

His father, Liu Chengtang, is a young man, skilled in kung fu and superb in skills. Their father and son are recognized as the best carpenters in the neighborhood. It's just that now the two of them are too old, and they no longer do the craft of splitting axes, and all their skills have been passed on to Liu Yingguo's brothers.

The surname Liu is a local surname, and there are tens of thousands of people in the surrounding districts and towns outside the mountain. In Xinghua Village, it accounts for almost half of the village's population. He had heard his grandfather Liu Liyang say that Xinghua Village was uninhabited in the early days, and in the early Ming Dynasty, people surnamed Zeng were the first to move here. Their surname Liu was only relocated in the Yongle period, and most of the families with other surnames moved in one after another during the early Ming and Qing dynasties.

The Liu family of Xinghua Village, they are a long house. Carpentry skills come from ancestors, Liu Yingguo's grandfather Liu Liyang accumulated some family business in the early years, and built this three-entry compound in the village, with seventeen or eighteen houses. It's a pity that his grandmother died early, and only his father Liu Shengtang is a man. The two aunts were also not biological, and both were adopted later.

Fortunately, his mother was angry and gave birth to six brothers and sisters in one go, and all of them were alive. It's just that her mother is also short-lived, and she died when she was one year old. The six of their brothers and sisters all relied on the old man, their father and his eldest brother to grow up and start a family. After his grandfather became deaf in both ears after two catastrophes, he handed over power to his father and took care of the family. His father used the excuse of old age and poor health to push it all on him.

Now the four Liu Yingguo brothers have all started a family and have children, and there are more than 20 people in the family. The big guys are crowded in the old yard, barely able to live. But the children and nephews have grown up in a blink of an eye, and they are about to marry wives and start families, and the houses are obviously too crowded.

He and his father discussed opening a new yard next to it. In this big family, the father and he have absolute rights. Last night he announced the decision to build a new house at a family meeting, and he didn't expect that the four of them would quarrel at noon today, and he also offended his father.

"Every family has a scripture that is difficult to read", Liu Yingguo was deeply touched by this. He has been a cadre since the primary and senior communes after liberation to the current people's commune, and he has been the secretary of the brigade for nearly ten years. The family conflicts in the village have been dealt with no more and no less, how can they not know the situation of their own family?

He has three sons and two daughters, his wife Li Yulian is shrewd and capable, and his eldest sister-in-law is like a mother, who has always been in charge of the family's finances. The second brother Liu Yinghua is honest, he is a good hand at farm work, and has three sons and one daughter, the third brother Liu Yingmin is a teacher in the commune middle school, and the younger sister-in-law Zeng Yuping is a hard-working person who does not talk much, and has two sons and a daughter, the fourth Liu Laoman is both shrewd and capable, the fourth is the production captain, and the younger sister-in-law Tan Lanxiang is a private teacher in the village primary school, but unfortunately she only has a pair of children, and she has not been able to get pregnant again due to her physical reasons.

Speaking of Liu Yingguo, he has the largest population in this room. The eldest son, Liu Dewen, is nearly 30 years old, has been a soldier for ten years, and now has worked in the army to the deputy battalion, and has married and started a family in the army three years ago, and his daughter-in-law is a worker in the city, and only gave birth to a big fat boy last year. During this time, I was weaned at home, and a large family of babies was very good. This son has left Xinghua Village in his life, and he is a hurried visitor when he comes back occasionally. The eldest daughter has been married for three years, and the children are in pairs, and now the second son Liu Dewu is also married, and plans to marry next year. The eldest nephew of the second brother's family, Derong, also got married, and saw that the little ones were springing up one after another very quickly, so that the old yard was obviously not enough to live in, and a new yard had to be opened in advance.

On the surface, they have not separated for four years, and they are harmonious, and they are exemplary in the township.

He knew that the root cause was still a separation. After the liberation, there are no families like their family in which four generations are in the same house and five generations are in the same house without separation, and there is no one in a radius of dozens of miles. In fact, everyone has the idea of dividing up. With such a large family together, there are many people with great strength, lively and harmonious, and everything is difficult to fake, but there are also drawbacks. That is, there are constraints, inconvenience and freedom.

For example, there are four brothers and two sons, only one son and one daughter. If the family is separated, the old house will be divided into four parts, and they will have enough to live in, and of course they are not willing to spend money and effort to repair and build a house.

He and his father had conversations, did he consider splitting up? But his father refused, saying that Gao Tang was alive, and before he closed his eyes, whoever dared to mention the separation of the family would directly sweep the floor and sever the relationship between father and son. After he and his father died, they couldn't see it, and they could scatter whatever their brothers wanted. My father is now over 70 years old, and his health is not as good as that of his grandfather, and none of their brothers dare to touch their heads again.

At dinner, my father didn't get up to eat, and when he pretended to be served, he turned his head to look at it. My grandfather couldn't hear it, but he could see it, and he sat at the head of his bed, smoked a bag of stuffy cigarettes, and went inside to rest without saying a word. The four brothers Liu Yingguo sat on the edge of the bed for a long time without saying a word. The eldest daughter-in-law, Li Yulian, carried her one-year-old grandson into the house and said:

"Master, did you fall or get sick? How can you do this without eating or drinking? It's expensive, you go and call Fan Jin to come over to help your father take a look, and ask him to bring two sticks of glucose at will. “

Liu Degui of the second family responded loudly in the outhouse, and the old man Liu Shengtang turned his head and shouted to stop his grandson from calling a doctor. Then he glanced at the four dejected sons in front of the bed, sighed and said:

"Let's go, I don't have anything to do, I just don't want to eat. Let me get a good night's sleep and tomorrow will be fine. And Yingguo, you hurry up and implement the homestead, start construction as soon as possible, and tell you, I can't close my eyes until the new house is completed. “

Note 1: The legend of "moving Jiangxi to fill Hunan" refers to the fact that Zhu Yuanzhang Nanjing called the emperor in order to retaliate for the support of the Hunan people for Chen Youliang, and ordered to "wash Hunan in blood" and slaughter the city for three days, so that ten rooms and nine empty in Hunan. In order to fill the population of Hunan, it was ordered to move the population from Jiangxi into Hunan. Nowadays, many family genealogies in Hunan record that the ancestors moved in from Jiangxi in the early Ming Dynasty. This statement is widely circulated in Hunan, but there is no record in the history books. But one thing is true: Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang have been fighting for many years and have been affected by this. The population of Hunan has plummeted, and it is true that there are no people for 100 miles, the original indigenous residents are scattered, and the land is barren. According to historical records, Xiangtan County had a population of 100,000 people in the Yuan Dynasty, only more than 20,000 people were left in the early Ming Dynasty, and Changning County in Hengyang, as early as the Song Dynasty Zhenning five years (1106) The registered population was 99,031 people, and to the Ming Yongle ten years (1412), including the Tun soldiers, there were only 5,887 people. It is also a fact that a large number of Jiangxi people moved into Hunan at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.

Note 2: "Five Good Families" originated in the 50s of the last century, advocated and initiated by the All-China Women's Federation, the "Striving for Five Good Families" activities, the content is: respect for the old and love for the young, men and women, harmony between husband and wife, diligence and thrift, unity of neighbors.