Mountains and rivers are silent, but the world is full of songs.
From the time when Liu Jindou, a doctor from Hongdong, moved north to the outside of the Great Wall during the Jiaqing period, to the evening when the tofu clappers were smashed at the end of the 20th century, the Liu family in Huairen County, Shanxi, carved a century-old epic in the folds of the loess with the blood, tears and laughter of seven generations. On this land and water, the old locust trees have withered and flourished several times, the Golden Bridge has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, the medicine box has been replaced by a stethoscope from silver needles, the mule and horse shop has been transformed into a supply and marketing cooperative, and the bangzi tune on the stage has finally been lost to the roar of the bulldozers. This is an elegy for farming civilization and an unofficial history of the national spirit.
In the cold spring of the 15th year of Jiaqing, Liu Jindou carried "Synopsis of the Golden Chamber" and Hongdong Sophora japonica seeds in his arms and planted the first silver needle outside Yanmen Pass. The conflict between a doctor's benevolence and his desire to survive in troubled times was already doomed when he treated the injured patients of the White Lotus Sect. When Liu Zhiyuan, the fifth generation, opened a Western medicine clinic during the War of 1911, "Revolutionary Army" was juxtaposed with medical books in the ancestral medicine box. Traditional medicine finally collided with modern civilization, sparking a prairie fire.
The old locust tree is a witness to this spirit: it sheltered Liu Zhi who was smoked with mugwort during the plague, and hid secret messages from the Tongmenghui. When it finally collapsed in front of the steel-making furnace, the copper coins and bullet casings buried at the root of the tree were like the metaphor of the yin and yang in Chinese medicine - the silver needle that saves the world and saves people will eventually dance with the guns that change the world.
When Liu Fuhan's weights hit the opium den, and when Liu Tonghan's explosives exploded in the magistrate's office, the ethical principles of the old clan had often collapsed amidst the sound of gunfire. The three brothers of the fourth generation - the conservative teacher, the revolutionary victim, and the Westernized rebel - are just like the three faces of ancient China in the wave of modernization.
By the time the sixth generation and nine sons went to the country
