In the northwest of Chongqing, less than 100 kilometers away, there is a not very large county called Tongliang. Speaking of this place, I still feel very deeply. Because since I returned to Chongqing in 2002, I have been concentrating on this area for half a year to do business, because there are too many masters in the main city, and wanting to gain a foothold is basically the same as stepping on people's lines, so I resolutely decided to start from the district and county, at least not to be embarrassed in front of so many masters at once.

Tongliang is a small city with outstanding individuals, this is the hometown of the hero Qiu Shaoyun, and it is also a town that has been established as a county since the pre-Qin period, with clean streets and fresh air, at least you can see the blue sky and white clouds here. In addition, Tongliang's Gongzi fish is also a local specialty, in Tongliang for more than half a year, I, a person who is afraid of stinging and hardly eats fish, but here in the fish village consumed a lot of silver. Not only that, this is also the birthplace of the Tongliang Dragon Dance, as early as when I was a child, every Chinese New Year would always pestered my parents to take me to the street to watch the parade of dragon and lion dances, those dancers wore red or yellow silk clothes, tied with the same turban as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a person played dragon balls in front of the dragon, a group of people from the dragon head to the dragon tail juggling with the swing, every time there is such a performance, the street is always full of people, the beating of gongs and drums and the sound of the suona in eastern Sichuan mixed with firecrackers in the air diffuse, all this, I haven't seen fireworks until many years ago.

And the story I want to tell today is related to the Tongliang Dragon Dance.

A week after returning to Chongqing from Suining, Hu Zongren called me again and said that a new case was coming, this time it was the same as the previous two times, it was the employer who called Ma Daoren's mobile phone, and then was intercepted by the Xuanyuan Association. Hu Zongren told me on the phone that the employer this time was a family of Tongliang Dragon Dance, and the general situation was that their family had recently received a notice that there was a road to pass in front of their old house in the countryside, and that there was their family's ancestral grave within the scope of the plan. So after discussing it privately, I still think that building the road is a major event for the benefit of the country and the people, but I still have to talk to the ancestor to burn incense, and on the night after the whole family burned incense to the ancestors, for several days, the descendants of the family have different degrees of ghosting, so the employer wondered if the ancestor was unhappy, and did not dare to move the grave casually, let alone call the Taoist priest to destroy the ancestor, so he called and planned to find a master like Ma Daoren to introduce a few compromise methods, so he contacted Hu Zongren.

Hu Zongren said with a smile on the phone, how did he know that I would not destroy their ancestors, and I, Hu Zongren, have been mainly learning ghost fighting techniques since more than ten years ago. I said to Hu Zongren, since it is a family of Tongliang Dragon Dance, then their family should be relatively wealthy, have you negotiated the price with the other party? Hu Zongren negotiated it, but the other party was still quite stubborn, insisting that this was the road builder who wanted to move the grave, so the contractor should pay for this honorarium, but he also promised that I would go and ask for this money, since Xuanyuan will push it over, what is the difference between having money and not having money, don't we still have to go?

Hu Zongren smiled bitterly, this bastard knew why he was in the first place, didn't he also bring it on himself for a while. So I said to Hu Zongren, then when are you going to leave? Hu Zongren said, then tomorrow.

Early the next morning, Hu Zongren came to my house to look for me, and by the way, he cheated on my house for breakfast. The two of us went out after eating, and the road to Tongliang was easy to walk, and it took less than an hour to enter the county seat. I asked Hu Zongren where the employer of the dragon dance family lived, and he said that the other party told him that he would call him when he arrived in Tongliang County, and he would come to pick us up. So Hu Zongren took out the phone and called the other party, and called the other party Mr. Zhao from his conversation, so the employer's surname this time was Zhao. After hanging up the phone, Hu Zongren told me that Mr. Zhao has been waiting for us in the city since last night, you see, he is still sincere enough, right? I said that this city is so big, and the distance from the east of the city to the west of the city is only about 20 minutes, so what can I wait for? Hu Zongren told me to drive to the building on XX Road first, and Mr. Zhao was there.

I've been in this place for half a year, but that's been many years ago. Over the years, the county has been built very quickly, and there are many new houses, and I don't know a lot of roads or I have to take a section to ask, but it didn't take long for me to get to the bottom of the building with double flashing lights, and then Hu Zongren called the other party and said that when we arrived, what is our license plate number, and it is parked on the side of the road, where are you? As soon as the words fell, on the sidewalk in the direction of my co-pilot, a man who was about 1.6 meters tall, looked about forty years old, bald but proudly threw his hair over to block it, wearing an army-green cloth suit similar to a tunic suit, a pair of dark blue pants that looked like trousers but did not look like them, a pair of black cloth shoes on his feet, and a man holding a shopping bag from a supermarket.

To be honest, I was still a little surprised when I saw him, it stands to reason that this Tongliang dragon dance can be regarded as the essence of local culture, the status of dragon dance culture in Tongliang is the same as the status of Sichuan opera in the hearts of Sichuan people, it cannot be replaced, since it is a dragon dance family, how can this teacher Zhao dress like a migrant worker in the city? I don't see the slightest appearance of a disciple of the family. From Hu Zongren's expression, I knew that he had the same doubts as me, but people can't look good, so we didn't speak. After Mr. Zhao got on the bus, he sat in the back seat with a smile on his face, stretched out his hand to shake hands with us, and then said hello very politely in his mouth, and when I shook hands with him, I also noticed that this was a pair of calloused hands, so I guessed that it might be left by the dragon dance when I was young. Teacher Zhao's voice was loud, probably because he had been in the sun for too long, and the beads of sweat on his forehead had been rising.

So I said to him, Mr. Zhao, there is a paper drawer in the back of my car, do you want to wipe your sweat first? Teacher Zhao said no, and reached out and wiped it with his sleeve. I said, you just tell us where your house is, why are you basking in the sun and waiting here on this hot day? Teacher Zhao said with a smile that their family lives far away, just because it is too far, so they came to the county seat last night and waited for us in a hotel. Hu Zongren answered, so your family is not in this county? I thought you dragon dancers should live in the city. Mr. Zhao was a little embarrassed to say, alas, don't talk about those old things, there is nothing to boast about at all, let's go, from here to my house, I have to drive for 1 hour.

In fact, I felt cheated because I drove for an hour and 40 minutes, and when I arrived at Mr. Zhao's house, it was almost time for lunch. The mountain road is not easy to walk down, anyway, I often go back to the countryside, but after I got off the car, I was taken by Mr. Zhao to walk the mountain road for more than 20 minutes, and it was uphill, I thought that this time the miscellaneous should also arrive, until I saw Mr. Zhao's house, completely dumbfounded.

In front of me was a house that looked like it was about to collapse, and the walls were made of red clay mixed with bamboo strips, and the dust was already very bad. There were chickens, ducks and dogs in the yard, and the dog barked at Hu Zongren and me a few times, and then began to wag its tail vigorously, and it probably knew that we were the ones who came to help their family. On the wall of the hall hangs a dragon head with bamboo sticks and silk of various colors, and the direction of the dragon head is facing the entrance and exit. You must know that if this was in ancient times, the head of the faucet hanging at home would have to be lost. Teacher Zhao said that there are six people in their family, their parents have passed away for many years, and his two sons and two brothers each live in a room, but they are all crammed into this small mud house, and the children of both families are going to school in other places, one is in high school and the other is in college, and they are both sons. So now all four members of the family have arrived.

When the Zhao family saw that we had arrived, they put a square table in the courtyard, then brought out a few long stools, and then handed cigarettes and water, and the two brothers sat and talked with us about how poor their family was, and the two daughters-in-law went to the kitchen to make lunch. Hu Zongren soon became a friend of life and death with the Chinese pastoral dog, he squatted down and took out a cigarette and asked the dog, brother, do you smoke? The dog said, Wang. Hu Zongren asked again, then do you think my financial luck is prosperous this year? And the dog said, Wang. Hu Zongren stretched out his hand and touched the dog's head, feeling that the other party had won his heart.

I asked Mr. Zhao what the situation is at home now, and I said that I understand the general situation, isn't it that after you worship your ancestors, there are one after another ghosts. What's the deal? Teacher Zhao said with a sad face, the first is himself, when he got up in the middle of the night to pee, as soon as he walked to the edge of the thatched house, he felt that the joint on the heel of his left foot seemed to be pricked by something fine, and it hurt. He also thought it was a mouse, so he turned on the light of the thatched house, and saw a thin old man wearing a pony hanging on the landlord's hat was lying on the ground biting his heel, Mr. Zhao said, there is a door panel outside the thatched house, that is to say, the old man was the upper body where he could see, but the lower body was blocked by the door panel, and it was all prostrate on the ground, and both hands also grabbed Mr. Zhao's feet.

Teacher Zhao said that he was so frightened that he raised his leg and kicked without even thinking about it, but he didn't kick anything, as if he had raised a burst of sand on the sand, and the old man disappeared. When he got up the next morning, he heard his brother say that he had a hot dry mouth in his throat when he fell asleep last night, so he pushed his wife next to him and asked her to serve water, and pushed his wife to lie still a lot, so he got angry and turned on the small lamp next to the bed, and was about to ask his wife what to call you when you didn't agree, but found that between him and his wife, there was an old man lying on his side. The old man held his face with one hand, like a child sleeping next to him listening to a story, his face was expressionless, and his eyes were looking at him closely. At that time, he was also frightened and fell under the bed all of a sudden, but when he looked up again, he didn't find anything, but his wife asked in a daze why you slept on the ground.

Teacher Zhao said that when his brother told him about it the next day, the two brothers found out that the old man should be the same person, so they wondered if there was a problem with worshipping the ancestors a few days ago, so the two went to the ancestral grave to make amends to the ancestors, but found that in the cracks of the ancestral grave, many snails the size of fingernails climbed out one after another.

When I heard this, I was alert, and it was not a good thing that there were snails crawling in the grave.