Library

To commemorate the forty-fifth anniversary of the victory of the Anti-Fascist War, the leadership assigned me to write an article. The content is mainly about the atrocities committed by the Japanese in our region and the heroic deeds of the people in the region in resisting Japan. This is an old and old topic. The leader reminded me to check the county annals! It reminds me that nature is the national spirit and main theme! I actually went to find a newly compiled county chronicle, and turned to the chapter about the occupation of Japan and the Anti-Japanese War. Reading those short paragraphs, I suddenly remembered some stories I heard when I was a child. The narrators of my stories are all honest farmers. They can't make things up. They tell fragments and incomplete stories. They all experienced things personally, so they are included in the county annals. But when they told it to me, there was a gap of more than twenty years between the time when the story took place.

The Chen family in Puliu Village, Wujiang, Suzhou is quite famous in the local area. Chen Zixiao's grandfather was a Jinshi in the 43rd year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty, and his father was a Jinshi in the 8th year of Wanli. In the second year of Tianqi, Chen Zixiao himself went to school and became a scholar. It can be said that he has been a scholar for generations. However, both his grandfather and father died early, and the Chen family was a single generation of three generations. Chen Zixiao was nearly a year old and had no heirs. The scholar Chen Zixiao guarded an ancestral property and built a scholarly family. It was really a big deal for him to have no heirs. The Chen family is not without its efforts. When the grandfather was still alive, he arranged for his grandson's marriage as soon as possible. Chen Zixiao got married at the age of 18 to his wife Deng, and gave birth to three girls in five years. The father was worried, so he took a concubine for him, Mrs. Zhang, and gave birth to two more girls within three years. At this time, his grandfather and father died one after another, and they died in silence.

In my childhood memories, only the Spring Festival at my grandpa's house is more like the Spring Festival. The first is the couplet, which is posted in red all over the room. My father likes to hold me in his arms while reciting. On the pillars in front of the door are: Three Yangs bring prosperity, and six years bring spring; on both sides of the door are: The sound of firecrackers expels the old year, and the curl of cigarettes welcomes the New Year; The more I recited the couplets, the longer they got longer. My grandpa smiled and pointed out, "Length is the key to knowledge." Grandpa read "The Beginning of Man" for three months. Next is the fire pit in the main room. The fire pit was built with mud bricks. Grandpa dug tree roots all winter long and built them into a high wall on the side of the house. The fire in the fire pit burned from New Year's Eve to the night of the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month. Even if the weather is so hot that people can only wear single clothes, the fire will still not go out. There is a large clay pot simmering in the fire pit, and the water is often boiling so that the lid of the pot makes a fluttering sound.