Tales of Xu Village

Everyone carries a hometown in their heart. No matter how much time has passed, how far away it is, whether it was good or bad, rich or poor, your hometown remains in your heart, neither near nor far, never leaving you. The good and bad of childhood are carved into the deepest part of your memory. You may not think about them, but once you do, they tug at your heart.

Xu Village was my hometown. After the devastating flood of 1998 breached the embankment at Shiliping, the area was designated a permanent flood-retention zone. Everyone was relocated to a new town built in the hills, ten miles away. The old site of Xu Village was left with nothing but patches of abandoned homesteads and scattered, ramshackle houses that looked as if a gust of wind could knock them down.

In recent years, land consolidation and the merging of villages and townships have made Xu Village disappear entirely. It exists now only as a home in my memories.

My father has always wanted me to move the few ancestral graves at the old site of Xu Village up to the hills, but I have never been able to make up my mind. Xu Village is gone, and if we move the graves too, the last roots connecting us to it will be severed.

The Past of Xu Village is an epitaph I have written in my heart for my hometown. Uncle Yan, Sanmao, Weimin, Renxiu, Xiuju, Qiuxiang, Yuan the Elder, Zhiyazi, Secretary Peng, Uncle Nan, Uncle Qingshan, Uncle Chuyuan, and so on: some are people from my own and my family’s experiences; others are familiar faces from my memories. Many are now difficult to contact, some I have never seen again, and others have already passed away. Those were the days of my youth, and their stories remain in my heart, impossible to erase. The older I get, the clearer they become. The Past of Xu Village is my way of recording these people and events, so I won’t dare to forget them, and can turn them over in my mind late at night.