In the old days, there was an old folk saying that it was called chasing white things, which was also called driving the grave or driving the grave. This means that if an old man dies in someone's family, the people he knows have to go to mourn, and he wears linen and filial piety and follows the coffin to the funeral procession to the cemetery, which is the local dialect to drive the grave; Every year on the day of the deceased and during the Qingming Festival, the one who goes to the grave to burn paper and kowtow is also called chasing the grave.

Nowadays, although the government requires the elderly in rural areas to be sent to the county crematorium for cremation after death, people's traditional concept is still to be buried in the ground, as long as they pay enough money to the village, they can be buried in their ancestral graves with peace of mind. Nowadays, the graves in the countryside are still similar to before, except that the coffin used to be carried by people and oxen, but now it has been replaced by tractors and cars, and the only thing that has not changed is the huge crowd at the funeral.

If you catch up with the funeral of a large family, the crowd carrying the coffin at the front has already walked to the cemetery, and the last one is still blocked at the entrance of the village and can't get out, so you can imagine how many people are sending the funeral.

If you want to say that the title of this book "Driving the Grave" does not refer to the meaning of sending the funeral to the grave, but it definitely has a great relationship with the cemetery, then it has to start with a famine in the last century.

It was in Henan in 1942, the previous year had just experienced floods, the following spring was hit by hail, black frost and strong winds, and more commonly the great drought, after which the locust plague began, almost imaginable natural disasters, concentrated together to attack Henan, which was captured by the Japanese in the northern, eastern and southeastern regions at that time.

At that time, Henan was the frontline position of the war against Japan, and the Kuomintang garrison in Henan had to collect a large amount of grain from the peasants every year as military salaries. The causes of these natural and man-made disasters led to a major disaster later, that is, the "Henan Famine of 1942" that shocked China and the world.

If you want to say that the landlord's family has no surplus food, then you won't believe it if you are killed in ordinary times. But in the second half of 1942, the autumn grain harvest in Henan was gone, and the crowd hiding from the famine walked was full of wreckage, not to mention decent grain, not even the bark, firewood, wood and other things, even the telephone poles erected by wooden stakes could be gnawed bald.

At that time, there were too many people who fled Henan to escape the famine, and the surrounding provinces could not bear to bear the closure of the city to limit the number of people, and many people starved to death on the roadside before they could get out of Henan. There are rumors that some people are really hungry and start eating people, and the living dare not eat, so they can only grab the dead with wild dogs on the roadside to eat, which is a bit disgusting to say, but it is enough to imagine how serious the famine was at that time, and how miserable those who fled were.

Let me go back to this grave, how many people died in the great famine in Henan, there is no way to verify, but a rough estimate of at least 3 million to 5 million people died in this famine, some people are lucky enough to die, and they can still meet well-wishers to dig a pit and bury them, but most of the people who died on the way to escape can only be eaten by wild dogs in the wind and sun.

Later, the government of the Republic of China at that time cremated some of the unclaimed corpses, but most of them were directly buried in the wilderness, at most they were built on a soil slope, and there was not even a tombstone.

People who starve to death are angry and do not reincarnate after death, this statement is used by the locals of Lushi County to scare children, in order to prevent children from running to those mass graves. But those buried in the mass graves of people who died of starvation due to fleeing famine are also evil, from time to time to make some trouble, every March 3, Qingming Festival, July and the first day of October, the four major ghost festivals, every household has to burn more paper money to the mass graves, so that the souls of those who starve to death are safe and do not come out to make trouble, and later formed a tradition, when burning paper for the deceased, but also throw more paper money nearby, and the mouth has to say: "Take the money, come to get the money, take the money to buy food yourself, don't come out to find it, Nothing. "The younger ones don't know why they do it, but they learn it and pass it on.

To put it this way, let's just say that the 49 years of national liberation, although the victory of the proletarian revolution was announced, and at the same time it was necessary to break the old traditions, old superstitions, old thinking, old classes, and so on, these mountains of pressure on the toiling masses, but the actual situation at that time was that the war had just passed, and what was left to the republic was a huge mess, and everything of value was basically taken away by the Kuomintang, and if the fifties and sixties were described in one word, it was hunger. Of course, what the children are most looking forward to is the New Year, only the New Year can eat something decent, rice and white flour buns or something, at that time, there was a folk song that sang smoothly: "Low index, melon and vegetable generation, eat full, hungry fast, swollen thighs, swollen head, pumpkin and pumpkin, eat melon every day, no oil and less salt, dilute quack." ”

After 62 years, the commune system began to be implemented, at that time there was a slogan "break all cows, ghosts, snakes and gods", which we are all familiar with, the old days of visiting temple fairs, incense, burning paper money and dancing gods, etc., these feudal superstitious activities have also been expressly prohibited, although the official prohibition, but this field takes advantage of no one to pay attention to steal some paper money, which has always been there.

Having said that, a few days before the Qingming Festival in 1950, there was a strange thing in Lushi County, there was a wasteland at the junction of the county seat near Shaanxi, and later because of the burial of many people who died of hunger in the famine year, it became a large mass grave, the graves one after another, and I don't know how many dead people were buried, just because there are many graves, the locals also call it "Tomb Slope".

It is said that one day in the middle of the night, after the third watch, there was a crying sound from the distant grave, it was a woman's voice miserable and hysterical, and the listener's scalp was numb and he just wanted to plug his ears. The local people are superstitious that the hungry ghosts are short of money to come out to cry and mourn, and no one dares to look for the sound in the middle of the night to see what is going on, until the night of the Qingming Festival, the nearby households collectively went to the tomb slope, and each household brought a lot of paper money to the roadside on the side of the tomb slope to burn more for those hungry ghosts, so that they would not come out in the middle of the night to cry and mourn.

The strange thing mentioned at the beginning is not that someone cried in the middle of the night, but an incident that the residents near the tomb encountered when they went to burn paper.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening, and the residents burned their paper money along the roadside, not far from each other, and lit a lot of paper-burning fires, thinking that after burning the paper money, they would go home and sleep quickly, and they didn't want to stay here in the middle of the night.

One of the people who went to burn paper was named Zhang Mao, in the impression of the neighbors, he was an honest man who farmed the land before the liberation, he was over 40 years old this year, his skin was dark and his body was very strong, and he was the pillar of the family.

Zhang Mao squatted on the side and lit a pile of burning paper, behind him was the grave slope, he was tired from doing a day's farm work, if it wasn't for the mother-in-law at home, let him also come to the tomb to burn some paper money and ask for peace, he would not be too lazy to come.

It's strange to say, the fire that was originally burning well suddenly started spinning in a windless state, and then the burning paper with the flame went to Zhang Mao's face, but fortunately Zhang Mao reacted quickly, and his body turned back, so that the fire did not burn his face and hair. Before he could check whether his clothes were on fire, he suddenly saw something moving in the grave not far away.

If it weren't for Zhang Mao turning his face behind him to avoid the burning paper blown by the wind, it would have been difficult to find a strange thing in the grave.

He took advantage of the large number of people nearby, so he got up and walked into the graveyard, and when he got closer, he found that the white thing was actually a skull poking out of the graveyard, and only some hair was left on the skull, and the flesh and skin were gone, revealing Sensen's white bones.

But this is not unusual, this area is full of mass graves, trying to save trouble The grave digging is also shallow, catching up with the heavy rain in which year, it can rush out a lot of dead people's bones, it is not strange.

Zhang Mao thought to himself: "It may be that the soil of the grave is shallow, exposing the head of the corpse, but what I saw just now seems to move, this doesn't make sense, is it possible that this bone frame is still fine, and it is going to come out?" ”

Originally, he was not very bold, and after seeing that it was a skull, he was not very afraid, but when he thought of those ghosts and gods and the like, he, a strong farmer, couldn't help but shudder, and his hamstrings and tendons also turned a few times.

Turning his head and looking at the overgrown weeds around him, the skull that exposed the soil, as if looking up at himself, the black hole in the two eye sockets made people tremble, and he didn't dare to stop and turn his head and walk back.

Zhang Mao didn't expect that he actually walked into the depths of the grave slope, and the crowd burning paper in the distance couldn't see clearly, the black light was blind and alone in the deserted grave, and he couldn't help but be a little flustered, and he just wanted to speed up his pace, but he heard a rustling sound behind him, the sound was very light, like something rubbing on the gravel ground. Zhang Mao didn't dare to turn around and look, but just swept it with his afterglow, and saw that the place where the skull was originally exposed, there was only a round hole left at this time, no matter how bold Zhang Mao was, he was also frightened and screamed, and ran away with his head stuffy, with a pit on his left foot and a slope on his right foot, and finally ran out of the grave slope to the side of the road.

I felt relieved to see that there were few people and fires, but my legs and stomach were still shaking, and as soon as I took a breath, I suddenly found that the people who were burning paper had stopped moving, and looked at me with a frightened expression.

Zhang Mao wondered at first, why are these people staring at me without burning paper? Then it didn't feel right, those people looked far away, definitely not looking at themselves, then there was something behind him, thinking of the skull that suddenly disappeared just now, he became nervous, and secretly said in his heart: "Could it be that the skeleton is alive and comes out with him?" ”

Although he thought so in his heart, he never dared to look back, he thought that there was a skeleton frame without skin and no flesh standing behind him, stretching out its branch-like bone hand, to strangle himself, and suddenly he was so frightened that he almost walked into the crotch of his pants, and his legs seemed to be filled with lead and could no longer take half a step, so he had to close his eyes and turn his back to the grave slope to ask the Buddha for protection.

With a gust of wind blowing, nothing happened, everywhere was quiet, Zhang Mao looked back, there was nothing behind him, only the wild grass on the graves in the distance, which was constantly swaying by the wind.

Zhang Mao scolded in his heart: "Damn, I was almost scared by that group of letter balls and peed my pants." Then he ignored them, and went straight to his pile of burning paper, and flicked it with his stick, thinking that he would hurry home after the burning, because this place was so fucking inherent.

When he looked up again, the people were still looking at the grave, still with that frightened expression, as if they hadn't come back to their senses, he slapped the people nearby with his hand, and this time the person shouted out.

This scream had a chain reaction, and all the people began to scream, like a fried pot, which startled Zhang Mao, and before he could react, everyone ran out, leaving Zhang Mao alone and squatting on the side of the road on the grave slope, guarding the piles of burning paper, the whole body trembled, and quickly got up to put out the burning paper piles that had not been extinguished, and ran home.

The next day, Zhang Mao asked a neighbor who went to burn paper last night: "Hey, what did you run last night?" What do you see? ”

The neighbor was also shocked when he mentioned last night's incident, he said that last night because Zhang Mao ran out of the grass on the grave slope, everyone heard the sound and looked at it, if it weren't for the sound of Zhang Mao running, they might not have noticed that the grave slope was full of figures. The men walked slowly to the west, all in ragged clothes, some with sticks in their hands, some supporting each other, like the people who fled from the famine. They were dumbfounded, and in the blink of an eye, the people in the kung fu grave were gone, and they didn't react until someone called, and then they came back to their senses, and they were all scared and ran home.

Later, it was said that in those years, the souls of the people who fled the famine and starved to death, did not know that they had already starved to death on the side of the road, and they kept going to the west, because of such an incident, the residents near the tomb slope hung up things to ward off evil spirits, for fear that those unjust souls would come to their homes to find food, and from then on, the tomb slope would make some noise from time to time, so that the nearby residents were worried all day long.

It was also a coincidence that when the construction of New China began, the first thing to do was to return the grave to the land. In the old days, there were many cemeteries left on the people's land, and some of them were still the kind of tombs that covered an area of 100 meters, wasting a lot of land that could be cultivated.

At that time, we did work mobilization, and moved the scattered graves to be buried in a centralized manner, so that land could be saved and managed, of course, it was paid by the government, as long as the villagers nodded and agreed, and some could also give some, housing and field subsidies, which was also a very practical thing.

Henan, known as the Central Plains in ancient times, is the birthplace of Chinese civilization and the most densely populated place. There are many graves in this person, so they have recruited a lot of powerful crop men to set up a grave relocation team, which gives a lot of money, and there are many people to do this work at the earliest, but this digging grave and digging the grave has always been a matter of great damage to yin morality, and gradually there are fewer people doing this work, and finally in the grave relocation team in Lushi County, there are only seven people left, and several of them are facing thousands of graves to be moved.

That's not to say that everyone agrees to move the ancestral grave on the field, some people take the feng shui of the ancestral grave as very heavy, so it's not good to carry the death to the end, every time they see a grave removal team coming, they have to go to their ancestral grave to guard, for fear that they will take advantage of their own inattention, to move the grave.

Later, when he saw the grave movers coming, he said, "These grave messengers are here again." This has been called for a long time, and people have used to calling them grave sweepers.

The story of this book is mainly about the Lushi County grave team, to say that this team of only seven people is not very capable, and it is not the best in this industry, but it is definitely the most strange thing among the many grave herders.

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